Facts and Stories and Fantasies
"Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story" is one of the first jokes you hear when you go to journalism school. It's funny for a while and then gets pretty tedious when you see it happen time and again, by either reporters with an agenda or politicians in search of an easy headline.
It happened again this week when a group of Democratic U.S. Senators introduced legislation to impose a moratorium on stimulus payments to renewable energy developers until the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act can be fixed so those payments "create jobs in the United States." Senator Charles Schumer of New York has been leading the charge for months and he was joined by Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana.
Some of the facts are verifiable: $1 billion of the $2.5 billion so far awarded has gone to foreign-based manufacturers and developers, in wind, mostly Spaniards; a Chinese wind turbine manufacturer may get $450 million in additional money whether it builds the equipment in its own country or locates a plant near its development partner's Texas project; and yes, some of the jobs and profits are staying offshore. The extent to which this is true, though, is very much in dispute.
The storyline is that our American tax dollars aren't creating jobs here, or not enough, fast enough, so cutting off the payments will force plant building, hiring and worker training - now!
The fantasies, mostly implied, are almost too numerous to mention. A couple are: Even if the storyline mentioned above could somehow come true, the conditions could be met on a mass scale and quickly enough so that projects could beat the qualifying start date for stimulus money of December 31, or less than 10 months from now; another might be that European turbine manufacturers aren't building the equipment here because they'd rather absorb the $200,000 per unit shipping costs to keep manufacturing in their home countries.
Senator Casey's prominence in the proposal is interesting. Just last week Gamesa USA recalled the last 79 employees it laid off from a western Pennsylvania turbine plant and said it would hire another 50 to fill orders funded from, guess what, the stimulus. And two weeks ago Casey was lauding Gamesa and Iberdrola, when he announced grants totaling $27.8 million in stimulus funds for three projects in his state, although two weren't technically part of the grant program targeted this week.
But yes, they are Spanish companies targeted by the senators, already rewarded for other projects that wouldn't have been built if this legislation was thought of and passed sooner. What parts of the facts, stories and fantasies am I missing?
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Comments
Facts and stories and fantasies
Actually, you're not missing a thing. These four senators (note the Democrats) have a perfectly valid point in trying to keep that funding at home. If timing is an issue, then move the deadline back. That's simple. Perhaps you didn't see the perfectly disingenuous interview on CNBC with the director of AWEA trying to explain how all of this money flowing overseas helped the US economy. That was impossible. The fact is, large wind farms (and solar farms too) do very little to stimulate job growth in the US in spite of being sold to local governments on that basis. There is a short term (6 months to one year) boost in local employment but most of this is from a transient workforce that is brought in for construction before moving on to the next project. The ongoing operations and maintenance work force amounts literally to nothing more than a handful. We should be thankful that someone is watching this and is willing to pipe up about the economic impact, or lack thereof.
Parts you are missing
The part you are missing is that the American manufacturing base has been severely crippled--or perhaps injected with a fatal poison--and is virtually disappearing. Loss of the manufacturing base results in loss of technology and innovation leadership, loss of jobs, and destruction of the economy.
The causes:
1) Greed of the "me" generation--shortsighted focus on immediate returns
2) Loss of pride in our country and our national identity
3) Uncontrolled, irresponsible envirionmentalism (as destinguished from environmental responsibility)
4) Corruption in government--pork barrel politics and porviding entitlements to buy votes--the desire for power rather than desire to serve the American people
5) The laziness that comes with properity
If this country had been in its present contition prior to World War II, we would have lost that war to the detriment of all mankind.