David Brooks' mea culpa for supporting green jobs as a cure for our economic woes has led to end-zone dancing on the right. Joe Romm counters:
The original article, whose headline boldly read “OBAMA VISITS CORPORATION WHERE HIS STIMULUS CREATED ‘GREEN’ JOBS AT $2 MILLION PER JOB” quietly admits further down in the article that this price is true only “if no more jobs are added.” Not surprisingly, the headline was not circulated with this critical disclaimer. The article also failed to mention that development is less than 50% complete, less than one third of the funds have been spent, and further expansion will create thousands of jobs in the coming years.
According to Johnson Controls, around 3,000 jobs will be created in the construction and operation of three separate facilities built with the $299 million grant. That means the federal government is actually creating one job with every $100,000 spent on the project – not $2 million as this misleading coverage asserts. This investment in jobs actually compares very favorably to job creation from other types of energy projects.
The Dish 