Green jobs

Remember all those "green jobs" President Obama and the Democrats were going to create by taxing struggling employers and out-of-work private-sector Americans and funneling the resulting loot to politically favored outfits developing "clean, energy-efficient" technologies?

Well, there aren't many green jobs. Certainly not in the wind business.

The United States installed more wind power last year -- 9,900 megawatts, or enough to power 2.4 million homes -- than in any other year. The growth in wind farm installations was a product of federal stimulus spending. Nonetheless, half the windmills were built overseas, and wind equipment manufacturers cut as many as 2,000 jobs last year.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, the drop in U.S. jobs is due, in part, to "the lack of a long-term national policy that would require a certain percentage of American electricity to come from renewable sources."

In other words, despite all the subsidies, wind power is still so expensive that hardly anyone is buying it, and the only solution is that Washington has to pull on its jackboots, limber up the truncheons, and go make them.

"A check with some of the companies that want to get into the wind manufacturing business found that even some that qualified for ... tax credits aren't able to create jobs quickly because they don't see enough demand for wind energy," reports the McClatchy Washington Bureau.

For instance, Basset Mechanical of Wisconsin qualified for a $868,500 tax credit to manufacture wind turbine towers and foundation parts. But company officials say they won't purchase the new equipment needed to receive the tax credit until it has enough sales volume to justify it.

So we can expect the costly green jobs that Washington has touted as our salvation from the recession to come on line promptly -- well pretty promptly -- um ... as soon as the recession ends.