“The president of the United States, Barack Obama, doesn’t seem to have chosen the right model to copy for his “green economy,” Spain. After the government of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero demonized a study of different experts about the fatal economic consequences of renewable energies, an internal document from the Spanish cabinet that it is even more negative has just been leaked.
PajamasMedia.com
Green-Tech Model Advocated by Obama
Destroyed the Prosperous Spanish Economy
Undisclosed Debt Revelations Startle Voters
First Greece, then Ireland and Portugal, now Spain, next America? Two reports by the every vigilant Pajamas Media (PJM); and numerous other revelations from Spain are painting an ugly picture of political corruption, stupidity and rampant cronyism in eastern Iberia. The Spanish Socialist government has issued a secret report showing that their green-tech jobs program destroyed the country’s once prosperous economy. 2011’s 21.3% UNEMPLOYMENT figure confirms their confession as did the PJM’s uncovering of the original story.
In 1997, Spain was the most prosperous European economy and one of the strongest in the world: unemployment stood at less than 4%. The country’s most popular political power, the Socialist Party began movement toward a green economy at that time. Today, unemployment is five and a half times as high. The elections in Spain in 2010 sent the ruling Socialists out of power; but people are today none too happy with the traditionally weaker Conservative Party either. Most people believe that all the politicians in Spain pass laws to benefit themselves and do little for the people. The country’s tiny Moderate Party made big gains in the 2010 elections and is expected to do even better in the 2012 ones. The Socialists, however, are truly under-the-gun since recent revelations of heretofore huge unacknowledged debt has dealt an angry surprise to the voters and may force the nation to follow in the footsteps of bankrupt Greece, Ireland and Portugal and require a bailout from the international monetary fund (which American voters largely finance).
Piles of undisclosed debt in local government associated with the operation of the country’s green-tech jobs programs are shaking up a political scene that was pretty much in chaos to begin with. Spain, which had been doing everything it could to avoid becoming the next European bailout recipient, is far worse off than its people had been led to believe. The huge debt revelations in 2010 seemed to indicate that the Socialists were waiting for the Conservatives to discover it after the election so the voters might “shoot the messenger” in the next election. Unfortunately for the Socialists, the truth emerged and anger has remained rampant along the Costa del Sol and throughout the Spanish countryside over the last year. Even today Spain has had trouble eradicating the debt and regaining a firm economic footing because of contract disputes with green energy companies created by the Socialist’s green energy programs.
It all began with the first “offseason” government change earlier in 2010 in Catalonia which revealed a budget deficit there more than twice what had been reported earlier. Piles of “hidden debt” are still being revealed to the new government related to the green program and to health clinics and other suppliers . . . in short, economists and analysts and numerous anecdotal reports from companies that supply local governments in Spain indicate widespread, unrecorded debt. Companies complained that the Socialists when in power pressured them to do business off-the-books rather than immediately bill for goods and services according to Fernando Eguidazu, vice president of the Circulo de Empresarios business lobby group in Madrid. This chicanery continues to add tens of billions of euros to the official debt figures reported by local and regional governments.
Undermined by a 21.3% unemployment rate and a perceived slowness in reacting to the country’s economic crisis, the Socialists lost control of the municipal governments of Barcelona and Seville, the country’s second- and third-largest cities. Young people are protesting everywhere including the main plazas of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia. Unemployment among those in their 20’s and 30’s reached 50% in many areas at the height of the Spanish crisis.
Pajamas Media’s exclusive original story about the leaked Spanish government report in 2010 was confirmed later by several Spanish newspapers. Yes, the very same Spanish “green economy” policies that Barack Obama has modeled his administration’s green-jobs programs upon . . . have been cited by the Socialist government that created them as an “expensive, ineffective and unworkable disaster.” The first Spanish newspaper on the scent was La Gaceta, a Madrid daily. At about the time the story “went viral” the Socialist government came out with an admission that it was true.
For Americans the shocker has to be that the headline in La Gaceta (the Gazette) seemed to be aimed squarely at a USA target audience as it screams out (English Translation Provided by Rajjpuut):
“Spain admits that the green economy
Sold to Obama is a disaster.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/05/economia_verde_ruina.pdf
The Spanish public is still up in arms. An academic team in Spain revealed all this in 2007 and was treated monstrously by the country’s media and by the ruling Socialists trying to discredit the survey’s purpose as purely political and without merit (Americans will recall that when the results of the Spanis study were brought up in a press conference, Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs made fun of the questioner). Dr. Gabriel Calzada, the Spaniard who first exposed the disaster in 2007 was finally vindicated despite taking mountains of flack from the progressive academic establishment at his own and other universities across the country.
Professor Calzada is today often still featured on all the nation’s most important news and business talk shows. Despite all the nasty attacks he received, the good professor had enough integrity to stick by his guns these last four years and a year ago even wrote praise for “The dissection of ‘free-ice cream green jobs economics’” on the book jacket of Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America by American author Christopher C. Horner, a Pajamas Media watchdog whose book bears this enscription on the inside flap: “Barack Obama’s ‘Green’ Policies Start With Controlling Your Energy…and End With Your Life.”
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Grab-Policies-Freedom-Bankrupt/dp/1596985992
This scandal associated with deliberately villifying Calzada and covering up the truth for three years, however, pales in contrast with the undisclosed debt still popping up everywhere in the country. But Spaniards and Americans would do well to remember that the problems associated with our own financial meltdown** and with Spain’s collapse began years ago with misguided and deliberate progressive policies (more later). For now remember this, in Calzada’s study:
A) 2.2 real jobs in the real economy were lost for each green-tech job subsidized by the Spanish government.
B) The average subsidized green tech job there (although counted equally with all the lost permanent jobs in the real economy) lasted less than a year.
C) Only 10% of all the Spanish green-tech jobs proved permanent.
D) So, in reality, 22 real jobs in the real economy were lost for every permanent green job created in Spain
E) The average green tech job there paid roughly $12.20.
F) The owners of Spanish solar plants make 12 times more than what they pay for the energy coming from fossil fuel combustion. The majority of this profit comes from subsidies charged to the consumer via taxes.
The long-run numbers are even scarier for Spain. The government itself in recent revelation says that the alternative energies sector are stil scheduled to receive 126 billion euros in the next 25 years. And things bode very badly for America: Pajamas Media put it like this:
“The president of the United States, Barack Obama, doesn’t seem to have chosen the right model to copy for his “green economy,” Spain. After the government of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero demonized a study of different experts about the fatal economic consequences of renewable energies, an internal document from the Spanish cabinet that it is even more negative has just been leaked.
To one of the authors of the first report, Gabriel Calzada, “the government has leaked it intentionally in order to turn the media against renewable energies and to be stronger in negotiations with businesses.” On eight occasions, the occupant of the White House referred to the Spanish model as an example to follow. Barack Obama wants us to enjoy the same success the Spanish have known from green energy.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** In America, the second wave of progressive sabotage began with the progressives in the Carter administration in 1977 passing the CRA ’77 legistlation that first forced private sector home lenders to make knowingly ill-advised loans to unqualified home loan applicants. This travesty was multiplied four times by Bill Clinton (Bush, Sr. has a bit of the guilt on his resume as well); attacked this ridiculous law and exposed its weaknesses using Cloward-Piven Strategy by ACORN which controlled Bill Clintons electoral destiny for eighteen years. Even ACORN lawyer Barack Obama did his part. Overall the suspect loan rate in 1975 0.24%; became 0.51% in 1985; 14.2% in 1995 (after a Clinton regulatory expansion and two legislative expansions); and 34% in 2005.
Thanks to ACORN many of these suspect loans after Clinton’s 1998 steroid version final expansion of CRA’77 put people without jobs; with abysmal credit ratings; with only food stamps to declare as “income” into $250,000 to $450,000 homes at zero downpament. Bush, Jr. who is getting all the blame now . . . in January, 2005 (one of 19 such speeches and vote efforts) tried to repeal CRA laws and only succeeded thirty months later in getting a very weak version of his law passed in July, 2007. It all proved too little too late, but did help some. Today, much of the CRA legislation is still on the books waiting another ACORN push. Of course, the mainstream media runs with the progressive line that “the conservatives and the free market put our economy into the ditch.”
By the way, the First Wave of sabotage ended when the federal government bailed out bankrupt New York City in 1975. New York State and many states and other large cities were also driven near the point of bankruptcy and the stock market suffered its biggest losses (46%) since the Great Depression (sound familiar?) . . . thanks to the progressive-left’s implementation of Cloward-Piven Strategy and Alinsky tactics to deliberately double the welfare rolls from eight to sixteen million people in seven years and overload the system as promised. This also was a deliberate sabotage by the progressive left. Rajjpuut has explained the matter in deep detail in numerous blogs. Find another take on the Cloward-Piven Strategy history leading to the bankruptcy of NYC, here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html
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