At Thursday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony on the side of a new battery manufacturing plant being built in Holland, Michigan President Obama proved yet again that his smashmouth politics knows no limits.

Using $150 million of Obama’s “stimulus” bill money, Compact Power – a South Korean company – is building the plant in Holland and will eventually create 300 jobs there.  The math indicates that’s about $500,000 a job.

The good folks of Holland wanted to celebrate the choice of their town by Compact Power, a South Korean company.  They invited two political celebrities: President Obama and Republican Cong. Pete Hoekstra, who is running for Michigan governor this year.  The town of Holland is in Hoekstra’s district (in fact, it’s his home town.)

Acknowledging Hoekstra – who was sitting within arm’s reach of the president – Obama first took a cut at him: “There are some folks who want to go back, who think that we should return to the policies that helped to lead to this recession,” he said. “Some of them made the political calculation that it’s better to obstruct than to lend a hand. They’ve said no to tax cuts; they’ve said no to small-business loans; they’ve said no to clean-energy projects.”

And then Obama’s backswing with the slash” “Now, that doesn’t stop them from being at ribbon cuttings, but that’s okay, you know.”

(more…)

On May 27, President Obama remarked to an audience gathered at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada that Americans, “pioneered solar technology, but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in generating it, even though they get less sun than we do.  They certainly get less sun than Nevada.”  Today, Vice President Biden and a handful of Cabinet secretaries releases the Recovery through Retrofit report that will extol the virtues of green jobs and energy savings to be had if only the government had its way.

Observers of national policy may want to look at other countries’ experiences to see how they have fared with efforts to improve environmental policies.  Previous research on green jobs policies in Spain showed that costs were high and benefits short-lived.  But what of the President’s example of Germany?

(more…)