Audit Finds Bloated Budget For Green Jobs Training Despite Lack Of Open Positions

A federal audit shows that nearly a half-billion dollars in government funds was spent on training workers for so-called “green jobs.” The only problem is that not enough positions in the growing industry exist.

The findings — released in a June report by the Government Accountability Office — showed that only 55 percent of those trained were able to place in a new job, many of which were not technically green jobs. The $501 million in funding came from the 2009 stimulus law. The report also uncovered that the Department of Labor created a framework that led grantees to broadly interpret the program’s definition to include any job “that could be linked, directly or indirectly, to a beneficial outcome” which led to the gap between training programs and available green industry jobs.

CONTINUED:  http://libertycrier.com/audit-finds-bloated-budget-for-green-jobs-training-despite-lack-of-open-positions/?utm_source=The+Liberty+Crier&utm_campaign=9eec5cf102-The_Liberty_Crier_Daily_News_8_7_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_600843dec4-9eec5cf102-284870777

A MESSAGE FROM AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY

Over three years ago, President Obama ratcheted up government spending and debt with his $831 billion stimulus package, while promising to create jobs and boost economic growth here in America.

But now, we're finding out that billions of those stimulus dollars were actually spent helping "green energy" companies overseas. Learn more about this outrage today. Be among the first to watch our groundbreaking ad exposing the truth.

Even though there are 13 million unemployed Americans, the Obama administration is working to create "green jobs" in foreign countries!
Click here to watch the ad and learn more about what is being done with your tax dollars!

This ad is only the beginning. Americans for Prosperity will be pushing hard on all fronts to ensure that every American knows we must put grassroots pressure on President Obama for his disastrous economic policies.
If you want to send a message to the President, please join with Americans for Prosperity and tell the President to Stop Tanking America.

Click here to sign the Stop Tanking America petition!

We cannot allow reckless government spending to go unchecked, particularly when the money goes overseas. Spread the word. Tell your family, your friends, your neighbors, and anyone who will listen about this Administration's lack of regard for American jobs and the American economy.

Together, let's expose the hypocrisy of the stimulus dollars sent overseas.
Sincerely,

Tim Phillips
President, Americans for Prosperity

Americans for Prosperity® (AFP) is a nationwide organization of citizen leaders committed to advancing every individual's right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFP believes reducing the size and scope of government is the best safeguard to ensuring individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFP educates and engages citizens in support of restraining state and federal government growth, and returning government to its constitutional limits. AFP has more than 2 million members, including members in all 50 states, and 34 state chapters and affiliates. More than 90,000 Americans in all 50 states have made a financial investment in AFP or AFP Foundation. For more information, visit www.americansforprosperity.org

THE BLAZE: CNNMoney Caught Changing Report on ‘Green’ Jobs Numbers, Casting Them in More Positive Light

At 7:50 am Friday morning, CNNMoney reported on the embarrassingly small number of jobs the “green” energy industry has contributed to the nation’s workforce. The story was titled “‘Green’ jobs just a small portion of workforce.”


CONTINUED:  http://www.theblaze.com/stories/cnnmoney-caught-changing-report-on-green-jobs-numbers-casting-them-in-more-positive-light/

LIBERTY EXTRA: The Obama Energy Strangle-Hold on America

By Christopher G. Adamo

While the Obama Administration has worked tirelessly at minimizing the negative political fallout of its “green jobs” debacle (Solyndra being among the few that gained attention), the nation has yet to fully grasp just how devastating the Obama agenda has been to the overall condition of America’s energy resources and reserves. In a perverse sense, the ongoing economic downturn, persisting as it has for three years and with no end in sight, acts as something of a “safety valve” on the cost of gasoline and heating oil. The sole reason that the price at the pumps is not currently in the stratosphere is because the Obama economy has severely suppressed its use. Otherwise any rise in consumption would quickly exceed available supplies.

Thus, for those prices to remain low, the economic prognosis must remain grim. As soon as manufacturing activity heats up and traffic on the nation’s highways increases in response, the demand for fossil fuels will likewise increase, triggering an upswing in their cost. In a sane world, this rise would be shortly offset by an increased supply, thereby balancing out the situation. However, with Obama and his Democrat cohorts stifling every attempt at expanding production, and worse, placing entire regions such as the Gulf of Mexico off limits (at least to Americans), the lack of any new supply of crude oil to compensate for higher demand guarantees that even a tiny spark of resurgent economic life will immediately result in escalating fuel prices, which in turn chokes out the activity.

http://news.libertyextra.com/?v6CHWBkz57T7WTl3FjyNTX16dmqVrf1Lv

Will Angry Left Sacrifice Obama In '12 Election?

Suddenly, liberal op-ed writers are trashing — even lampooning — Barack Obama as a one-term president ("one and done"). Centrist Democrats up for re-election in 2012 openly worry about inviting a kindred president into their districts, lest the supposed new pariah lose them votes.


Left-wing think tanks, environmentalists and academics vent their anger against Obama for supposedly being too soft on Republicans, and too ready to compromise with right-wingers. But what really caused the left-wing falling-out, less than three years after the hope-and-change crush on Barack Obama? For now, polls.


Obama's popularity has fallen to little more than 40% approval. Suddenly, Democrats worry the public anger could be contagious. It might infect them as well, in the way a sinking George W. Bush hurt congressional Republicans up for re-election in '06.


Yet the left cannot fairly blame Obama. After all, he rammed through on a strictly partisan vote the century-old liberal dream of a federal takeover of health care — something that Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton never could do. Keynesians never dreamed that a president could actually borrow $5 trillion for domestic spending in less than three years.

The Obama administration even tried to shut down a brand-new Boeing aircraft plant on the shaky argument that the company might thereby be hiring fewer union workers somewhere else.

For environmentalists, Obama kept oil producers out of new fields in Alaska, the American West, the Gulf and other offshore sites. Hundreds of billions in borrowed federal money went to failed "wind and solar" plants to jump-start "millions of green jobs."

CONTINUE READING: 
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/584924/201109151814/Will-Angry-Left-Sacrifice-Obama-In-12-Election-.htm