Federal Audit Reveals $500 Million Wasted on Training for "Green" Jobs that Don't Exist

"Hey, if that money wasn't spent on green jobs it would've just been wasted on ObamaCare or something else anyway..."

Ah, what's a half billion dollars here and there... But when you threaten to cut the federal budget it's an apocalypse.

From Fox News (h/t Gateway Pundit):

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.  

[...]  

The findings are the latest set of problems for a sector being heavily pushed by the current presidential administration. 

Last April, California-based startup Fisker Automotive was brought to the verge of bankruptcy after receiving nearly $200 million in taxpayer dollars. 

The company, which was touted by the Obama administration as an innovator of plug-in electric cars, had to fire 75 percent of its workforce to stay afloat after only selling 2,000 of the 2,700 cars they manufactured. 

The LG Chem battery plant had production laid up for a year as workers were paid to sit around. The production halt was due to a lack of sales of the Chevy Volt but that didn’t stop them from receiving $150 million in federal funds and another $175 million in tax breaks. Production finally began last month, and the factory is expected to increase production by late 2015 -- it was ordered by the Department of Energy to pay back over $800,000 in grant money that was spent on idle worker salaries. 

Most notable was the case of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer start-up founded in 2005 that received nearly $530 million from the Energy Department before having to file for bankruptcy in August 2011. The company was shut down completely a month later amid an FBI investigation into whether the firm and its board members cooked the books and misrepresented its finances while seeking a government handout. 

“The GAO report is just more evidence that the administration has no clue what drives a successful economy and job growth,” said Paul Chesser, an associate fellow at the National Legal and Policy Center. "President Obama tried to build this economic sector, but the buyers didn’t come. And now after the initial flurry, the ‘green jobs’ are evaporating.”

 More waste, more money thrown away. *yawn* Another day another $20,000,000.

Is there any point in even suggesting that there be oversight to this nonsense?