When the story of the Department of Energy’s green loan program is written someday, the entire book will be contained in chapter 11:

After months of financial turmoil, an Energy Department-backed lithium ion battery company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company, Ener1, received a $118 million grant from DOE in 2010 as part of the president’s stimulus package. The money, which went to Ener1 subsidiary EnerDel, aimed to promote renewable energy storage battery technology for electrical grid use.

But despite generous federal support for the company, Ener1 was racked by problems last year. In October, NASDAQ delisted the company due to non-compliance with Securities and Exchange Commission filing requirements. A month later, the company’s president, chief executive, and top financial officer were fired.

On Thursday, Ener1 announced it will initiate a pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan as part of an agreement to restructure the company’s debt obligations.

The problem? Something the government often fails to take into account when spending tons of other people’s money because they think it can be artificially created later on: Product demand:

In a statement announcing the company’s bankruptcy, CEO Alex Sorokin said that the company’s business plan was crippled by insufficient consumer demand.

“We moved aggressively to reduce costs and shift focus when the marketplace did not evolve as quickly as anticipated. Our business plan was impacted when demand for lithium-ion batteries slowed due to lower-than-expected adoption for electric passenger vehicles,” Sorokin wrote.

Translation: You’re not buying Volts fast enough, America!

Not long ago, Ener1 was the proud recipient of a big sloppy Recovery Summer kiss of death from our very own Sheriff Joe Biden:

There will be others.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Obama’s Green Robber Barons
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

Had enough of fat cat Barack Obama, his jet-setting wife and his multi-millionaire Chicago consigliere/real-estate mogul Valerie Jarrett attacking the “rich”? Well, brace yourselves. You’ll be hearing much more from the White House about the “wealthy few” who aren’t paying their “fair share” as Obama’s re-election campaign doubles down on class-war demagoguery.

As usual, there’s always a set of immunity charms for the privileged friends and family of the ruling class. When it comes to all the Green Robber Barons who’ve reaped an obscenely unfair share of billions of tax dollars from the Obama administration, the envy trumpeteers will be quieter than a nest of mute church mice.

Obama’s State of the Union address defiantly pitched a new round of clean energy spending orgies to help the “middle class.” But how have the serial bankruptcies and near-bankruptcies of several federally subsidized solar companies — all under Obama’s watch — helped anyone but an upper-crust elite of eco-crats and their lobbyists and consultants?

Bankrupt Solyndra, billionaire George Kaiser. In the wake of the half-billion-dollar Solyndra stimulus bust, company officials revealed plans to hand out hefty bonuses totaling $500,000. Months before the politically connected solar energy manufacturer went belly up, it was doling out bonus payments of between $40,000 and $60,000 to several executives. Last week, a local CBS News crew caught employees at the Silicon Valley headquarters trashing solar panel glass tubes worth an estimated $10 million.

The now-abandoned Taj Mahal complex cost ordinary Americans more than $733 million. But billionaire Democratic donor and frequent White House guest George Kaiser, whose nonprofit foundation was Solyndra’s biggest investor, is still sitting pretty. He and the other private investors of Solyndra will recoup their losses ahead of taxpayers. And while they blast their GOP opponents, double-standard Democrats will remain AWOL on the glaring tax-avoidance strategies of the wealthy Kaiser Family Foundation.

Bankrupt Beacon Power, fat Democratic coffers. This green energy storage plant filed for bankruptcy last fall after a $43 million injection of Obama Department of Energy loan guarantees. Federal election record filings show that CEO William Capp contributed to the 2008 Obama campaign, as well as several left-wing New England Democratic candidates. Beacon Power lobbyist Steve Wolfe was a former aide to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Beacon sought bankruptcy shelter two days after the White House responded to fiscal watchdogs’ demands for a review of the DOE’s shoddy loan monitoring programs.

Bankrupt SpectraWatt, red-faced Goldman Sachs. A solar cell company based in New York, SpectraWatt went belly up last August despite a half-million-dollar federal stimulus boost and lucrative backing from politically connected Goldman Sachs — whose ties reach deep into the Obama Treasury Department, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, White House National Economic Council and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. itself. The eco-failure was dumped in a fire sale for less than $5 million.

Teetering Nevada Geothermal, cheerleading Harry Reid. Despite $150 million in federal DOE and Treasury Department subsidies — not to mention personal lobbying by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — this alternative energy project is on the brink of failure. A Deloitte and Touche audit grimly concludes that the company “has incurred net losses over the past several years, has an accumulated deficit of $44.0 million and an anticipated inability to retire its long-term liabilities.” According to CBS News, the company’s latest SEC filings warn of multiple defaults.

My scouring of White House visitor logs shows nine visits from another Green Robber Baron, Illinois-based Exelon’s CEO John Rowe, who met with the president and former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel multiple times. As Forbes magazine reported: The clean energy company “has very deep ties to the Obama Administration. Frank M. Clark, who runs ComEd, helped advise Obama before he ran for president and is one of Obama’s largest fundraisers. Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, worked as a consultant to Exelon. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, helped create Exelon” — where he raked in more than $16 million over two years.

Remember: “Fairness” is in the eye of the wealth redistributors.

When a Republican-led House panel subpoenaed the White House to turn over any and all Solyndra-related documents, I figured they’d drag their heels until about, oh, mid-November of 2012. Sure enough, the White House is protesting the subpoena, but the reason given is funny coming from an administration that has been busy skirting Congress by way of executive order.

From Fox News:

The White House on Friday all but refused to turn over the documents House Republicans have subpoenaed on bankrupt solar firm Solyndra, firing off a letter saying the request would put an “unreasonable burden on the president’s ability to meet his constitutional duties.”
.
The feisty response appears to set up a clash between congressional investigators and the White House over the sprawling probe into Solyndra’s finances and the administration’s involvement in the decision to provide the struggling company a $528 million loan with taxpayer money.

White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, in her letter, scolded GOP lawmakers for demanding more documents, noting the Obama administration has already turned over 85,000 pages of documents in the course of their investigation. Without explicitly refusing to comply with the subpoena, Ruemmler repeatedly described the order as “overbroad.”

At a Solyndra hearing, Democrat Rep. Ed Markey, after explaining that the Bush administration also ignored subpoenas and that Republicans circled the wagons to protect Big Oil, claimed that the Republican subpoena of all Solyndra correspondence has nothing to do with getting to the bottom of the bankruptcy and everything to do with the Republicans’ fear of solar power:

“When it comes to solar energy, Republicans embrace the disinfecting power of sunlight and disclosure. When it comes to oil, they seem to prefer to hide behind its murky sheen.

“This is not about using our subpoena power, this is about fossil fuel and nuclear interests wanting fewer Americans using solar power.”

So if the Republicans would just shut up and allow a dozen more Solyndras to get hundreds of millions in additional taxpayer loans and then go under, more Americans would end up using solar power?

Let’s not forget, we’re talking about an administration that came into office billing itself as the most transparent in history. “Bush didn’t have to do it that way” shouldn’t be an acceptable defense if we are in fact witnessing a historic level of transparency.

Meanwhile, a Solyndra auction was held. One man paid $400 for the company banner that served as the backdrop for President Obama when he visited last year:

Do you think he could get President Obama to sign it? Didn’t think so… just asking.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

President Obama has said “pass this jobs bill” dozens if not hundreds of times over the past several weeks, and still Congress hasn’t passed the bill. Now a frustrated Obama has decided to kick it up a gear by invoking a higher authority:

He also sought to shame the Republican-controlled House by accusing its leaders of wasting time during a jobs crisis with debates over commemorative baseball coins and reaffirming “In God We Trust” as the country’s motto. The House has refused to consider Obama’s jobs bill.

“That’s not putting people back to work,” Obama said. “I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work. There’s work to be done. There are workers ready to do it. The American people are behind this.”

God wants to see us help ourselves? Is this the same President who just warned of a painful era of self-reliance if he’s not re-elected?

Until action is taken on the jobs bill, apparently God also wants to see a slew of executive orders signed in order to work around Congress.

Update: Just got this Tweet speculating that Obama was merely speaking in the 3rd person.

Update II: WH Press Secretary Jay Carney tried to back up Obama on this and ended up serving himself a helping of fail.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

In 2009, Joe Biden, the Conductor of the Train to the Future, gave California’s high speed rail proposal his full support. Subsequently, $2.25 billion of the money for California’s rail construction came from the federal stimulus — a drop in an ever expanding bucket as it turns out.

From Mercury News by way of JWF:

Faster than a speeding bullet train, the cost of the state’s massive high-speed rail project has zoomed to nearly $100 billion — triple the estimate given to voters and more than enough to run the entire state government for a year.

What’s more, bullet trains won’t be up and running until at least 2033, much later than the original estimate of 2020, although that depends on the state finding the remaining 90 percent of the funds needed to complete the plan.

The new figures come from a final business plan to be unveiled by the California High-Speed Rail Authority on Tuesday, though some of the details were leaked to the media, including this newspaper, on Monday. Officials at the rail authority did not respond to repeated requests for comment Monday.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday was expected to endorse the long-awaited plan, the first major update to the project in two years and the last before the federal deadline to begin construction next year. But state legislators, who were already skeptical, will tear through the plan starting Tuesday before deciding whether to start building, or to kill the project.

The new business plan pegs the price tag at $98.5 billion, accounting for inflation — more than double the estimate of $42.6 billion from two years ago, when it was already the priciest public works development in the nation. It’s a little less than triple the estimate of $33.6 billion voters were told when they approved the project in 2008.

If the projected cost of the California project has tripled just since 2008 and construction hasn’t even started yet, imagine what the cost will be by the time it’s finished — if the state (and country for that matter) hasn’t gone beyond bankrupt by then.

Politicians in other states have been offered federal money for high speed rail projects, run the numbers, and said “thanks, but no thanks.”

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The pessimist sees this as taxpayers being out $43 million, but the optimistic green bureaucrat will compare it to Solyndra and tout it as saving taxpayers $492 million.

The latest DoE loan recipient to declare bankruptcy is Beacon Power Corp:

A Massachusetts company that received a $43 million Energy Department loan guarantee last year filed for bankruptcy Sunday, a step certain to fuel criticism of federal green energy financing in the wake of the solar company Solyndra’s collapse.

Beacon Power Corp., which develops energy storage systems, filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.

Beacon Power had received federal loan guarantee to help build an energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York that began operating in January. The Treasury Department’s Federal Financing Bank provided the loan.

Beacon sought bankruptcy protection two days after the White House ordered an independent 60-day evaluation of the Energy Department’s loan programs aimed at ensuring effective management and monitoring.

As usual, when explaining Beacon Power Corp., the Department of Energy will claim they performed their due diligence. As you’ll read below, the threshold of what’s considered a “red flag” is apparently much more lax when you’re spending somebody else’s money.

From Verum Serum:

It looks like the Administration will also have some questions to answer about their evaluation of Beacon’s credit-worthiness. Because just weeks before the DOE granted final approval of the loan, they were on the verge of being de-listed.

In mid-September [2009], Beacon received word from NASDAQ that it was out of compliance with the exchange’s minimum trading-price of $1 per share. Beacon Power closed at 72 cents a share the day NASDAQ sent its notice. Beacon said it believes it meets applicable standards, other than the minimum bid price requirement.

Read the rest here.

Meanwhile, Nevada Geothermal, with about $145 million of taxpayer money at stake, is dancing on the insolvency line. However, one DoE loan recipient, Fisker, does look to be creating jobs… in Finland.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

What are the odds this review determines that there was indeed malfeasance during their watch?**

**The Rhetorical Question of the Day was brought to you by QuietRock soundproof doors. When you don’t want to hear the answer, make it QuietRock!

From Fox News:

The White House has ordered a review of the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program in the wake of a growing scandal over Solyndra, a California-based solar company that went bankrupt after receiving a $528 million federal loan.

Congressional Republicans have been investigating the bankruptcy of Solyndra Inc. amid revelations that federal officials were warned it had problems but nonetheless continued to support it. The House Energy and Commerce Committee could vote as early next week to subpoena White House records related to the loan.

White House chief of staff Bill Daley says the new independent review will assess the condition of other loan guarantees made by the Energy Department. There are more than two dozen of these to a variety of clean energy companies.

Daley said he’s tapping a former Treasury official to conduct the review.

Don’t even bother to ask Rahm Emanuel about it.

Solyndra is the big name in the Energy Department’s venture socialism program where taxpayers only get a piece of the action on the downside, but Solyndra is not alone. Today brought just the latest example of a DoE loan to an Obama fundraiser:

An investment firm whose vice chairman has been an adviser and fundraiser for President Obama saw one of its portfolio companies win approval this year for $50 million in loans from the administration’s clean-energy loan program.

Washington-based Perseus says its affiliation with James A. Johnson, a major fundraiser for Obama’s campaign, played no role in persuading the Energy Department to award the loan to Vehicle Production Group, a Miami start-up that is manufacturing wheelchair-accessible cars and taxis.

Johnson headed Obama’s vice presidential selection committee in 2008 and is the former chairman of housing mortgage giant Fannie Mae. He was listed as a campaign fundraising bundler for Obama in the 2008 race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and committed to raising $200,000 to $500,000 for the upcoming presidential race.

Energy Secretary Chu will testify before Congress next month. Sheriff Joe Biden, who was charged with monitoring every dollar of stimulus money to make sure it was accounted for and spent responsibly, would have also been asked to appear but I think he’s going to be busy filing for a restraining order against Jason Mattera.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

**Written by Doug Powers

Instead of thanking Jason Mattera of Human Events for giving him an opportunity to reiterate his assertion that robberies, rapes and murders will go up if Congress fails to pass the “jobs bill,” Sheriff Joe Biden’s office is instead complaining that Mattera broke the rules:

Joe Biden’s office has complained to the Senate press gallery about a confrontation the vice president had with a conservative journalist last week on Capitol Hill.

Biden aides asked whether Senate rules were broken in the wake of the contentious exchange between the vice president and the reporter.

Jason Mattera, who works for Human Events, a conservative magazine, used a pretext to catch Biden off guard in a Senate hallway and grill him on claims the vice president has made about jobs legislation.

Biden’s office has also contacted the standing committee of correspondents, which oversees the gallery, regarding whether Mattera broke the rules by ambushing him.

Heather Rothman, the chairwoman of the gallery’s standing committee, said the matter is under review.

“We’re aware of the concerns,” said Rothman, a reporter for BNA. “It’s being discussed.

“We’re aware this occurred and the vice president’s office [has made] contact,” she added, noting the standing committee itself hasn’t met to deliberate the issue.

If they start banning any reporter with the potential to make Joe Biden look silly, the press gallery is going to be as sparsely populated as Capitol Hill’s next “I quit earmarks, ask me how” seminar.

Here’s the “confrontation” in question, in case you missed it:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Yes, I’m still awake. Up at 4am this morning and still going. Got home after a speech in Denver late tonight to find that the Senate (going on 900 + days without a budget) was up to all sorts of stealthy business in the midnight hour.

As of 1:28am, the Senate was casting procedural votes on the FY 2012 federal spending bill.

Guess what else they did?

They approved the nomination of solar subsidy king and eco-radical John Bryson.

Details on that vote:

John Bryson, confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Commerce secretary, will take a leading role in the Obama administration’s efforts to reduce an unemployment rate stuck above 9 percent and push to double U.S. imports.

Bryson, 68, the former head of Edison International in California, replaces Gary Locke, who became U.S. ambassador to China in August. The Senate vote last night on Bryson, who Obama chose at the end of May, was 74-26, with 21 Republicans and two independents joining all the Democrats in support.

Here’s the roll call vote…

Guess what else they did? They paved the way for more Fannie/Freddie taxpayer crutches:

The U.S. Senate adopted a measure that would raise the maximum size of a home loan backed by mortgage companies Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration to $729,750.

Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, offered the increase as an amendment to a spending bill today. The measure was approved less than a month after the limit on so-called conforming loans was automatically reduced to $625,500.

“If we want to get the economy moving, the housing market has to be part of it,” Menendez said tonight on the Senate floor.

The Senate adopted the amendment 60-3[8]. The amendment required 60 votes for approval and was offered during the chamber’s consideration of a package of spending measures. If the Senate passes the underlying bill, the House would then have to vote for it to become law.

The higher limits, should they be signed into law, would apply until Dec. 31, 2013. Lawmakers would pay for the cost of the higher limits by imposing an annual fee on the loans of 15 basis points of the unpaid principal balance of the mortgage.

Here’s the roll call vote on that:

Also in the dead of night: The Senate blocked two parts of the EduJobs bailout bill I’ve been telling you about:

Two elements of President Barack Obama’s jobs bill failed on procedural votes when Senators tried to move them as individual measures late Thursday. The chamber then plunged ahead on a long series of votes on amendments to a package of three appropriations bills before advancing the measure, setting up a vote on passage for the week of Oct. 31.

A Democratic proposal to provide $35 billion to keep teachers and first responders from being laid off was the first portion of Obama’s $447 billion jobs proposal to receive an individual vote. It went down 50-50, short of the 60 needed for the Senate to take up the measure. Three Members of the Democratic Conference — Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) — joined all Republicans in opposing the procedural motion.

Democrats have argued that the bill would save roughly 300,000 educator jobs and about 100,000 first responder jobs.

“By supporting such jobs, the plan aims to keep communities safe from crime and able to maintain critical emergency response capabilities,” the White House said in a statement of administration policy.

The measure would have been paid for by a 0.5 percent tax on those making more than $1 million a year.

Republicans have argued that the offset would hurt small-business owners, who often report business income and losses on their personal tax returns, as the nation struggles with high unemployment, which was at 9.1 percent in September.

“Everybody in this body knows that the American people want us to do something about the jobs crisis,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. “What Republicans have been saying is that raising taxes on business owners isn’t the way to do it.”

Here was the 50-50 roll call vote on that:

Other business:

- Ending federal subsidies for wealthy farmers.

- Killing a GOP-led effort to bar civilian trials for foreign terror suspects.

And finally getting around to the federal “minibus” spending package in the witching hour, the Senate heaped on disaster aid in addition to those expanded federal housing credits to the spending bills before calling it a night:

Voting well past midnight and into early Friday morning, the Senate added new disaster aid and expanded housing credit to a $182 billion spending bill even as members embraced a populist amendment denying farm subsidies to individuals with an average adjusted gross income of over $1 million.

“Rather than tax millionaires, the first thing we ought to do is quit giving them subsidies,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the lead sponsor. Senate Agriculture Committee leaders vainly appealed for their colleagues to wait until promised reforms in the new farm bill, but with the handwriting on the wall, even old allies deserted sending the final tally up to 84-15 for Coburn’s language.

The late-night session followed another long day of dithering, but before sending senators home for a week-long recess, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid at least secured the cloture motion he needed to tightly control debate when they return.

The Nevada Democrat, a long-time veteran of the appropriations, seemed alternately pleased and dismayed by what he called his “noble experiment” in legislating this week. And the winning procedural vote, 83-16 was only completed past 1:30 a.m.

Even if the Senate completes the appropriations package quickly when it returns Oct. 31 — as now promised — it will still have acted on only four of the 12 annual appropriations bills for the new fiscal year that began Oct. 1. With stopgap funding due to expire Nov 18, the House is increasingly impatient with the process and more likely to press for a single omnibus bill approach.

…The housing credit-related provisions forced, perhaps, the most closely fought fight. And the bipartisan coalition only narrowly got to the 60 vote threshold required for an amendment restoring higher conforming loan limits for government backed home mortgage loans.

These higher limits of up to $729,750 in high cost areas had fallen back to $625,500 at the end of last month, and proponents argued that this reduction was already having an adverse impact on a weak housing market.

The 60-38 roll call — not decided until the final moment — was followed soon after by a failed attempt by conservatives to tighten procedures for qualifying for food stamps.

Gotta love the Vampire Congress. As I’ve noted before, Democrat leaders have been promising the most ethical, transparent, open, and engaged administration for years. Instead, they have delivered a bleak and creepy legislative environment that could double as a Twilight movie set.

Here’s a complete list of all the roll call votes that took place out of daylight’s glare.

Same old, same old business as usual.

Boo!

At some point earlier in the week I read an LA Times article about President Obama encouraging an audience at a fire station to applaud a mention of his much ballyhooed but tough-to-sell-to-Congress “jobs bill.” I didn’t mention it at that point because it seemed to be one of those “video or nothing” moments when mere words wouldn’t suffice. Now, by way of Allahpundit over at Hot Air, there’s video.

One reason for the lax reaction could be that the “applause” sign was on the audio/video equipment truck that was stolen and hasn’t been recovered yet. What made it even more awkward was that I think the first few claps were from a guy who was only trying to smack a mosquito, but who knows:

If anything, this might serve as evidence that Obama’s audiences aren’t coached on the applause lines going in. However, Team Obama could still be planning their events under 2008 rules, back when no extra encouragement was necessary. Big mistake. Things have changed, and maybe this will turn out to be a teachable moment. By the time next September/October rolls around, cattle prods installed under the seat of each audience member could be a mandatory requirement.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

White House Spokesman Jay Carney today didn’t stray from Joe Biden’s side over his latest round of fear mongering.

Transcript from Real Clear Politics:

“I think it would be hard to find anyone that doesn’t agree,” White House press secretary Carney said about Joe Biden’s remark that rapes will increase if Congress does not pass Obama’s latest stimulus bill.

Carney was asked about Vice President Joe Biden saying rapes and murders will rise if the president’s jobs bill is not passed.

“I think everyone will agree with the equation that fewer police officers on the street has a direct effect on the crime rate. We saw this in the 1990′s. I do know that any lawmaker up on Capitol Hill will contest that simple fact or any American who makes that assessment in their local communities. Would you want fewer or more law enforcement officers on the job? Do you think that having more officers on the job would have a positive impact on crime? That is the point that the President absolutely shares,” Carney said.

Maybe at some point a reporter will ask Carney why there are fewer police on the streets today and they’re seeking billions more when the sales pitch for the original stimulus was that billions of those dollars would put more cops on the job.

Biden’s gotten so unhinged that the RNC is using him in an ad, so it’s probably good that President Obama isn’t reeling him back in. Plus, it’s entertaining for the rest of us.

Click the pic to roll tape:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

At Goode Elementary in York City, Pennsylvania yesterday, Joe Biden taught some 4th graders a valuable economic lesson: “If you need more money, just take it from rich people.”

From The Blaze by way of Ace of Spades:

Biden actually told the schoolchildren that, in order to rehire some 400,000 teachers nationwide, along with thousands of police officers and firefighters, all that needs to be done is tax wealthy individuals at a higher rate than they are currently taxed.

Then, in a move perhaps intended to woo, Biden told Lenid Keebaugh’s class of fourth-graders, “We’re going to give you some money to hire them back.”

Take about $500 in additional taxes from someone who makes a million dollars – “a million dollars,” Biden stressed – and those jobs will come right back.

Biden must have forgotten to blame Bush, which normally is part of his stock motivational speech to school children, but there’s such an urgency to pass the recently voted down jobs bill that I suppose the oversight is understandable:

A much more useful presentation would have been for Joe to show the kids where all that free money he keeps talking about is actually coming from:

Joe Biden update: You might have heard Joe Biden’s latest scare tactic of telling people that if the “jobs bill” isn’t passed, their chance of getting raped, robbed or murdered will increase.

Jason Mattera at Human Events confronted Biden about that claim. Check out the video here. The Sheriff got a little testy and a couple of aides whisked him away.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you are paying attention. Democrats in Washington are turning up the heat on the GOP as they push for quick passage of the “mini” $35 billion union jobs bailout. True to Alinsky form, Team Obama is spinning more emo-narratives centered on saving teachers from layoffs. At a Save the Teachers and Children! press conference yesterday, Senate Dems poured it on thick for their Big Labor pals. So did Joe Biden, who schmoozed it up with a class of fourth graders before turning on the fear-mongering spigot. Ignoring the billions in taxpayer dollars that he’s redistributed to the National Education Association’s pet causes over the last three years, the campaigner-in-chief took to the classroom to bemoan that “We have a tendency to say great things about how important education is in the abstract, but we don’t always put our money where our mouth is.”

As I spotlighted last week, President Obama’s marquee jobless teacher/poster boy for the union jobs bailout is a Boston educator who is NOT jobless. And all the little lies serve the larger Obama fraud of endless Keynesian intervention as a “cure” — which I’ve hit on again in my new column this week. Copy, clip, and save this companion chart (h/t Veronique de Rugy) for a ready reality check:

Update: Reid’s priorities laid bare. “It’s very clear that private sector jobs have been doing just fine, it’s the public sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is all about,” Reid said on the Senate floor.”

Video:

Listen to what this responsible teacher has to say: When funds run out “you end up fiscally going off a cliff,” said Iowa Rep. Jeremy Taylor, R-Sioux City, vice chairman of the Iowa House Education Committee. “I don’t think it’s a wise idea for our state to be budgeting based on that one-time money, and I say that as both a legislator and a teacher.

***

The EduJobs III Bailout
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

One of my son’s Suzuki violin teachers had a wise twist on an old saying: “If at first you don’t succeed, try something else.” The corollary? “When you do succeed, don’t stop. Do it again.” The White House could use some remedial Suzuki lessons in economics. They’ve got everything completely bass-ackward.

In February 2009, President Obama signed the trillion-dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Nearly $115 billion was earmarked for education. The stimulator-in-chief’s crack team of Ivy League economists predicted the law would hold the jobless rate under 8.5 percent.

The actual unemployment rate in October 2009 skyrocketed to a whopping 10.2 percent.

In August 2010, President Obama went back to the well. With deep-pocketed public employee unions by his side, he lobbied hard for the so-called “EduJobs” bill — $26 billion more to bail out bankrupt states, school districts and public hospitals. Nearly half went to teachers, whose unions raked in an estimated $50 million in rank-and-file dues as a result. Obama’s economists had promised the jobless rate would be down to 7.9 percent by then.

The actual unemployment rate in August 2010 was 9.6 percent.

Now, after the Senate rejected President Rerun’s latest half-trillion-dollar stimulus proposal, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are pushing for a “mini” $30 billion union jobs package for teachers (with $5 billion to mollify police and firefighters unions). In addition to funding fantastical green school construction jobs (earmarked for unionized-only contractors in an industry that is 85 percent nonunion), the EduJobs III bill will purportedly “save” 400,000 education jobs at an average cost of nearly $80,000 per job. Those will be paid for with a 0.5 percent surtax on millionaires. The job-savings estimates come from the same economic wunderkinds who predicted the jobless rate today would be 7.1 percent.

The actual unemployment rate reported this month is 9.1 percent. While the White House decries layoffs, the inconvenient truth is that the EduJobs III union payoff is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions laid off in the private sector. According to official government statistics, the share of the eligible population now holding a job has sunk to 58.1 percent, the lowest since July 1983. (Moreover, as education investigative reporter Mike Antonucci and others have noted, the White House teacher layoff math is more statistical chicanery.)

So, where did all the original EduJobs money go? One survey by the Center on Education Policy found that much of the cash went to bolster fringe benefits and administrative staff. The Fordham Institute’s education analyst Chris Tessone noted: “There is no reason to expect anything but business as usual from another round of subsidies. … More subsidies just protect the status quo at great expense to taxpayers.”

While strapped, reckless-spending school districts bemoan the edge of the federal “funding cliff,” another chunk of the EduJobs money went to states that didn’t even need it — and had kept their teacher payrolls full through responsible fiscal stewardship. As education journalist Chris Moody reported last summer, states including North Dakota, Tennessee, Arkansas and Alaska whose budgets are in the black received tens of millions in superfluous school subsidies. “Arkansas,” Moody found, “has a fully funded teaching staff for the coming year, but the state will still receive up to $91 million for teaching jobs.”

In Alaska, school districts had already made hiring decisions for teachers and apportioned the children in each class based upon those numbers. Nevertheless, to fulfill their teachers union-pandering mission, Obama showered the state with $24 million under the bill — money that a state education bureaucrat acknowledged “probably would not go to adding new teachers.”

Other states, such as Illinois and West Virginia, raked in hundreds of millions more in EduJobs dough even though they hadn’t yet burned through 2009 education stimulus money. In fact, a total of 20 states and the District of Columbia have spent less than 5 percent of their allotments, according to Education Week magazine.

An Obama education official helpfully suggested that the unneeded money be spent on “on-campus therapists” instead.

Many other school districts failed to heed warnings against binging on full-time hiring sprees with temporary funding. Education Week reported this spring that the New Hanover County (N.C.) school district used $4.8 million in short-term EduJobs money to fund 88 teaching positions, in addition to more than 100 classroom slots funded with 2009 stimulus tax dollars. Obama and the Democrats blame meanie Republicans for the fiscal emergencies these districts now face.

But who devoured the Beltway candy instead of eating their peas? Washington rewards bloated school pensions, Taj Mahal construction outlays and chronic local education budget shortfalls by pouring more money down their sinkholes.

Instead of incentivizing fixes, politicians — dependent on teachers union campaign contributions and human shield photo-ops — incentivize more failure.

The solution to this vicious cycle of profligacy? It’s elementary: Try something else.

***

Related must-read from Neal McCluskey, who further deconstructs the White House teacher layoff math:

The administration’s report, after all, says that 300,000 elementary and secondary jobs were lost between 2008 and 2011, which seems like a big number. The report doesn’t say whether that was net or total, and it is probably a worst-case scenario, but still, that feels huge.

Huge, that is, until you see what it’s out of. In 2008 the total number of school and district employees was 6,318,395. That means a 300,000 loss was just a 4.7 percent trimming — far from humongous. To put that in students-per-employee perspective, using the latest total enrollment estimate such a cut would have taken us from a ratio of 7.9 students per employee in 2008 to about 8.2 to 1 today. In other words, it would have created a student-to-employee situation we haven’t seen since all the way back in…2003.

Oh.

But what if we lost another 280,000, which is the scenario the administration if trying to scare us with for the current school year? Add that to the 300,000 worst-case loss between 2008 and today, and it would be a total edu-jobs loss of 580,000. In percentage terms that would be a 9.2 percent drop since 2008, and in student-per-staffer perspective an uptick to 8.6 kids per employee, a proportion we last saw in just 1998.

That’s regretable, perhaps, but considering the gigantic staffing increases over the decades — a near doubling since 1969 — and stagnant achievement scores, we should probably be asking why we’ve let cuts be so small up to now. And lest we forget: The nation has an over $14 trillion-and-growing debt, which threatens all of us like a gigantic asteroid hurtling toward Earth. In light of that, using taxpayer dollars to keep public schooling a perpetual jobs factory not only flies in the face of educational logic, it is fiscal and economic lunacy.

The Obama Administration’s edu-jobs plan might work politically — it might be a great weapon for getting votes — but as public policy it is utterly irresponsible.

Another bus tour is under way to promote the $447 billion “save the jobs of the same people whose jobs were supposed to have been saved by the first stimulus” bill. As expected, President Obama is suggesting breaking the bill into smaller pieces. The problem is apparently that the American Jobs Act is simply too much blinding brilliance for simple-minded Republicans (and a couple of Democrats) to comprehend in a single bill.

At least that’s what it sounds like:

“We’ve decided, let’s let them do the right thing one more time. We’re going to give them another chance to do their jobs by looking after your jobs. So this week, I’m asking members of Congress to vote. What we’re going to do is we’re going to break up my jobs bill. Maybe they just couldn’t understand the whole thing all at once. So we’re going to break it up into bite-size pieces so they can take a thoughtful approach to this legislation,” President Obama said at a campaign stop in Asheville, NC.

The problem for Obama is of course that the opponents of the bill understand it too much — not too little.

Click the pic to roll the President’s dissatisfaction with the GOP’s inability to wrap their tiny little elephant brains around his work of genius:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

citizenbrad

Time for some classic Obama Bus Tour photoshops (more here). Yep, he’s on the road again — campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime for who knows what whenever. In the aftermath of the Senate’s rejection of his massive government jobs slush fund, the White House will now push for passage of a slew of mini-slush funds and bailouts.

Public employee unions first, of course — with a dose of “We are the Occupiers You’ve Been Waiting For.”

The Hill reports:

President Obama is returning to the road this week to press Congress to start passing the American Jobs Act, beginning with $35 billion for states to put teachers and first-responders to work.

But White House officials said Sunday that Obama will not be sending a separate piece of legislation to Congress, referring questions about the process to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

…The first piece Obama wants is $35 billion in aid for states to prevent the laying off of or support increased hiring of teachers, police officers and fire fighters, [WH spokesman] Earnest said.

…Earnest said that as Obama travels this week, the president will “continue to acknowledge the frustration that he himself shares” with Wall Street.

And using the popular refrain from the Occupy crowds, Earnest said that Obama will ensure “the interests of 99 percent of Americans… is well represented[.]”

At the end of the trip, Earnest said, “the message will be clear: Pass the bill this week to protect the job of a North Carolina teacher, or come down here, look her in the eye and explain to her why protecting” tax cuts for the wealthy is more important than passing the jobs bill.

Let’s hope he finds a teacher who’s actually out of work this time to promote as poster child.