Obama Following Spain Down The Toilet

We now have another good reason to hope that Barack Obama fails. On at least eight occasions, Obama has pointed to Spain’s economy as the model that he believed the United States should emulate. Well, he’s halfway there. Spain’s unemployment rate is about 20%, while we hover at about 10%. I hope he fails to follow Spain.

What Obama found so attractive about Spain’s economy was its emphasis on so-called “green jobs.” He was so enamored with the concept of green jobs that he installed a self-described Marxist and conspiracy theorist as his green jobs czar. He had to reach deep into the far left’s loony bin because no serious economist would want his name attached to this.

The concept of green jobs dates back to Al Gore’s ludicrous 1992 tome “Earth in the Balance.” In that book Al Gore proposed that we replace our current productivity-based economy with a green economy. Instead of paying people to make things, we would pay them to pick up trash, clean up streams and replant forests. This fairy tale economy caught on with the abysmally ignorant, including it seems, our man-child president.

Someday, Al Gore might stand alongside Rachel Carson as authors whose ignorant books ultimately resulted in catastrophic damage by seducing equally ignorant disciples.

One of those seduced was Spain’s socialist president, José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero. Since assuming office, his government has pushed a green economy with hefty government subsidies and today Spain is in shambles.

That Zapatero’s policies contributed to Spain’s economic collapse was revealed in a study commissioned by Zapatero himself. Previously an independent economic analysis of Spain’s green jobs initiatives estimated that for every green job created, 2.2 real jobs were destroyed. The study commissioned by Zapatero found that the private study actually underestimated the job losses.

Spain’s consumers are required to pay 12 times as much per kilowatt hour for solar-generated electricity compared with the electricity generated from fossil fuels. This has forced Spain’s industries to pay 17% more for power compared to their international competitors. As Obama himself declared, green energy policies cause electricity rates to “necessarily skyrocket.” To Spain’s sorrow, he was right. As a consequence, Spain’s emission of carbon dioxide has indeed declined. But that’s the sort of thing that one should expect when factories close and lay off their employees.

To underwrite all his green initiatives, Zapatero has driven his county into a debt crisis that experts predict will dwarf Greece’s. That is Spain’s fate. And if some have their way, it will be ours.

The mainstream American news media have not yet reported on this and might never, but the Spanish press has published the information. One week ago the Spanish newspaper La Craceta published a front page story titled, “Spain admits that the green energy as sold to Obama is a disaster: The Spanish government leaks a report that admits the ominous economic consequences of betting in favor of renewable energies.” The story is a devastating indictment of the sort of government manipulation of the energy markets that Obama envisions for us. Indeed there is a bill before the Congress today that copies Spain’s disastrous strategy.

The so-called “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act” co-authored by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) would start us down Spain’s path. Kerry boasts that this bill will create jobs by subsidizing green technologies, precisely as Zapatero claimed his initiative would.

Is there any reason to believe that the laws of economics are any different in the western hemisphere than they are in the eastern? Here we are in the midst of a deep recession and this country’s majority party wishes to set us on a course that is a proven path to ruin.

Who in his right mind really believes that following Spain off the cliff will be good for America? But that’s not the point. The point is to concentrate power in Washington, DC. The Kerry-Lieberman bill will put the government in control of just about every aspect of our lives under the guise of saving the planet. If carbon emissions were really the peril that Democrats claim then all they would have to do is facilitate nuclear power generation. If Al Gore really believed that carbon dioxide was going to make the seas rise, would he have purchased a new $9 million beach front mansion? If green jobs promote prosperity, then why is Spain in the toilet?