When I was little, my dream was to have one of those battery-powered kiddie cars that I could sit in and drive around the neighborhood, waving and showing off to my friends.  Whenever we got a new Sears catalog, I would flip right to the kiddie cars.   The brightly-painted toy cars were always on one of the full-color pages,  and looked just like a real car!  I could only imagine what it would be like to be a rich kid.

The electric kiddie cars never did sell very well, because they were expensive and unreliable.  Everyone knew that they would only work for a short while and then break.  With a brand new battery, the toy cars barely had enough power to move a 40 pound kid, and even then only for a few minutes.  But they sure looked cool.

Unfortunately, nothing much has changed.

Back in October of 2009, Vice-President Joe Biden bleated his excitement over the federal subsidies granted to electric-car maker Fisker, who promised 2500 Delaware jobs and the resurrection of a mothballed GM plant:

“While some wanted to write off America’s auto industry, we said no.  We knew that we needed to do something different – in Delaware and all across the nation,” said Vice President Biden.  “We understood a new chapter had to be written, a new chapter in which we strengthen American manufacturing by investing in innovation.  Thanks to a real commitment by this Administration, loans from the Department of Energy, the creativity of U.S. companies and the tenacity of great state partners like Delaware – we’re on our way to helping America’s auto industry reclaim its top position in the global market.”

Today it was announced that the state of Delaware stands to lose $21 million it had committed to Fisker, and the Obama administration has been predictably quiet about how much of its $529 million loan is at risk.  It turns out that not only has there never been a car produced, the plant still stands empty, with the State of Delaware paying to keep the electricity turned on.  What a surprise.

Toyota has scrapped plans to release its new mass market e-car, the ‘eQ’.   The Chevy Volt has required massive subsidies and tax incentives to generate unit sales to the public and the government has bought many of those produced.  With cheap and seemingly limitless natural gas available in the US, why should taxpayers be forced to invest in electric-car companies when private investors won’t?  And why should taxpayers pay $7,500 to $10,000 to every buyer of a Volt – especially when the average income of Chevy Volt buyers is $170,000 per year?  Is this the administration’s idea of “fairness”?

The electric-vehicle debacle is only a tiny portion of the Green agenda promoted by the Obama administration, and which continues to be their corruption-vehicle of choice.  A scam was just revealed by the CBC in which a train loaded with bio-fuels toodled around crossing in and out of Canada 24 times and playing Chinese-fire-drill with its cars, without ever unloading a drop of product.  It seems that every time the train crossed the border it was given brownie points under an EPA program, which it can sell for millions of dollars to other carriers.

According to the Washington Post, a US Treasury investigation of the Obama’s clean energy program revealed a cesspool of corruption:

(Townhall.com) After an exhaustive analysis of thousands of memos, company records and internal e-mails about Obama’s green-technology spending program, the Washington Post concluded that it was “infused with politics” at every level of the decision-making process. Political considerations dominated the White House’s deal-making and all too often overruled warnings that billions of tax dollars would be lost on shaky energy projects that should never have been approved.  “Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers,” the newspaper reported at the time.

At a time when it is universally understood that our nation can not survive another four years of drunken-sailor spending, can’t we put this Green Energy nonsense to bed once and for all?  And couldn’t we solve a major portion of our economic woes by eliminating the EPA?

We all know only the rich kids can afford electric cars anyway.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Here in my car,
I know I’ve started to think
About leaving tonight,
Although nothing seems right
In cars