U.S. Department of Energy statistics show 79 percent of the $2.1 billion in stimulus money allocated for wind energy has been paid to foreign manufacturers.
The Spanish company Iberdrola has received $443 million; the Portuguese company EDP has received $229 million; and the British company Terra Firma, which bought a large wind farm in western Pennsylvania, received $42 million.
Analysts worry the stimulus funds will also help create manufacturing jobs in China, and a Texas consortium’s plans to build a wind farm that primarily will rely on Chinese-made turbines using $450 million in stimulus money underscores this fear.
Meanwhile, all the municipal jobs I am bidding on require me to sign a "Buy American" clause! WTF is my country doing with MY tax money????
ReplyDeleteLets not forget the money going to the oil company for off-shore drilling in South America to supply China with more affordable oil.
ReplyDeleteSo it's Obama's fault that we've allowed free trade agreements to rip manufacturing jobs out of the US?
ReplyDeleteThe blame for our economic woes lies squarely in the lap of Republicans and Democrats who have pushed for he terrible free trade deals that have left the American worker sitting with his "you know what" in his hand so that Nike can make a bundle by paying foreign workers crap wages.
Oh give it up 1155--Obama and the current Democrat party have increased the debt to UNHEARD OF numbers, there is NO ONE TO BLAME for the current situation except them. Democrats have been in control of the House and Senate for FOUR YEARS, they write the porkinfested bills, they take the money from the trial lawyers, big Pharma and big Insurance--be honest. OR ARE YOU AGNOSTIC about honesty like Obama?
ReplyDelete12:01, you are apart of the problem. You are apart of the blind idealogues who love anyone with an "R" and demonize anyone who doesn't. The fact is that we arrived at our current destination due to poor decisions on both sides.
ReplyDeleteObama has increased the debt, but the ramifications of his decisions will not be apparent for some time. Judge him based on this, not on what both Reps. and Dems. have done to get us here.
12:01 it's also funny that you don't have a rebuttal against what I've said regarding free trade. You can only begin to attack me simply for calling out the shortfalls of your party during the process of calling out both parties.
ReplyDelete12:01
ReplyDeleteYou need to understand that both parties are to blame, not just the demoncrats. All this progressive crap and maximizing profits of US companies with cheap foreign labor (see, both parties) are major underlying faults with the status quo system.
I say we levy tariffs on foreign goods such that it will be competitive to manufacture goods here in the US. Whoa, that might even create a few jobs within our borders. Will it drive costs up? Yeah, probably, but it might also make that executive at (your favorite big company here) rethink his massive salary and bonus in order to maximize the profit margin for the shareholders.
Will we revert back to the sweat shop days? Not likely, the bureaucracy has so many "thou shalt" programs in place that the proposition of this sort of thing recurring is nil.
Still, get a handle on the trade imbalance and you will see decent paying jobs once again open up on our shores, provided we don't permit the southern border to become an even bigger sieve than it already is. Nothing against legal immigration, but an illegal is a criminal, plain and simple.