THE OBAMA JINX

Is there an Obama jinx?  Sportswriters wondered about that when favored teams were upset shortly after the president praised them.  Political reporters speculated about a "vacation jinx" because bad things seem to happen when Mr. Obama went on them.

The Bangs Avenue School in Asbury Park, New Jersey was renamed the "Barack H. Obama Elementary School" in 2010.  A year later, the school was closed.

At a United Auto Workers conference in Detroit Feb. 28, the president recalled a 2010 visit to the Hamtrack, Michigan plant where the Chevy Volt is built.

The Secret Service wouldn’t let him drive one, Mr. Obama said.  "But I liked sitting in it.  I’ll bet it drives real good.  Five years from now, when I’m not president anymore, I’ll buy one and drive it myself."

Two days later, General Motors announced it was shutting down the Volt production line.  About 1,300 workers will lose their jobs, at least temporarily.

"In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries," Mr. Obama said in his state of the union address in January.

He was referring to Ener1, a recipient of a $118 million grant from the Department of Energy.  Two days after that speech, Ener1 filed for bankruptcy protection.

The Volt and Ener1 are the latest in a long list of "green" firms that ran into trouble after President Obama endorsed them.

*In the 2010 SOTU, the president praised the investment he’d made in a "California business that will put a thousand people to work making solar panels."

Mr. Obama was referring to Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy last September after having received $535 million in federal loan guarantees.  The firm is leaving behind an environmental mess.  The FBI is investigating.

*Abound Solar, a Longmont, Colorado firm which received a $400 million federal loan guarantee, "will create more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs" at plants in Indiana and Colorado, the president predicted in his weekly radio address July 3, 2010.

Abound Solar announced Feb. 28 layoffs of 280 workers — 70 percent of its work force.

*Mr. Obama praised Amonix, a manufacturer of photovoltaic solar power systems, in a speech in Las Vegas in July, 2010.

Amonix, a recipient of a $5.9 million tax credit, announced Jan. 25 it was laying off 200 workers at its North Las Vegas assembly plant — nearly two thirds of its work force there.

*Assisted by a $249 million grant from the Department of Energy, A123 Systems built a new plant in Livonia, Michigan, to manufacture lithium-ion batteries for electric cars.  The plant  "represents the birth of an entire new industry in America," Mr. Obama said on a visit there in September, 2010.

A123 Systems will lay off "temporarily" 125 of its 1,000 employees in Michigan, the Detroit Business News reported Nov. 30.

A123 Systems has been in business since 2001, but has yet to make a profit, noted Benzinga financial analyst Joel Morehouse.  Its funded debt account "jumped a staggering 3,000 percent" last year, he said.

If Barack Obama were your investment adviser, you’d undoubtedly fire him.  His track record stinks.

The administration’s "investments" of more than $40 billion of our tax dollars in "green" firms has produced very little energy.  Renewables (other than hydro) account for less than 7 percent of primary energy production.

What little energy they’ve produced is very expensive.  Electricity generated by solar power costs three times as much as electricity from coal, four times as much as from natural gas.  The Navy — which pays about $2.50 a gallon for petroleum — paid $425 a gallon for 20,000 gallons of an algae-based biofuel.

Nor have the promised jobs materialized.  DOE estimated its subsidies created just 3,545 permanent new jobs – at  a cost of about $5 million per job.

So why is the president planning to pour more taxpayer dollars down these ratholes?  The title of an ABC News investigative report Tuesday (3/6) offers a clue:  "Green Firms Get Fed Cash, Give Execs Bonuses, Fail."

Most of the subsidized firms are owned or run by major Obama contributors.  The failures of these firms have been hard on their employees and the taxpayers.  But the big shots made out like bandits.  Could this have been the real purpose of the subsidies all along?  

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.