Lies about green jobs: Now it’s the Los Angeles edition

March 1, 2013

By Chris Reed

We’ve seen President Obama and Gov. Brown spread the green jobs myth, pretending that niche categories of employment can revive the larger national and state economies. Now Los Angeles mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti is offering up the green Kool-Aid, claiming if he’s elected he’ll bring 20,000 green jobs to a city that the Los Angeles Times has finally admitted is in broad economic decline.

But as the L.A. Weekly is reporting, Garcetti doesn’t exactly have credibility on this front:

“On Nov. 10, 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown came to Los Angeles to help open the new headquarters of CODA Automotive. The company was rolling out its CODA Sedan, which boasted new battery technology that would deliver unprecedented range for an all-electric car. The company claimed it would bring 650 high-tech jobs to L.A.

“‘To the naysayers, we’re saying yes to solar, yes to CODA,’ Brown said. ‘We’re saying yes to a Los Angeles that’s on the move.’

“But though Brown and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa did most of the talking at the day’s ceremony, it was City Council president Eric Garcetti who deserved most of the credit. Garcetti played the key role in enticing CODA to move its headquarters from Santa Monica by dangling $1 million in city redevelopment money — even as he received $8,000 in contributions from CODA executives and their spouses.

“And yet, a little more than a year later, CODA is in trouble. The company never got close to its goal of 650 employees, topping out at about 270 before it began laying off workers in December. A showroom at the Westfield Century City mall has closed. It appears the company has sold fewer than 100 cars.

“Over the past several months, CODA has been sued by eight suppliers for unpaid bills amounting to more than $1.7 million. One of its suppliers recently warned in an SEC filing of “substantial uncertainty regarding CODA’s ability to honor their obligations.”

“‘Their staff’s been cut to nothing,’ says John Gartner, an analyst at Pike Research. ‘On the automotive side, it seems like there’s not much of a future for them.'”

Connect the dots on green-job lies? Nah

Isn’t this, yunno, news? That green job claims at every level haven’t come true?

Nah.

What we’re seeing in the national media with the basic refusal to acknowledge that the president’s sequestration rhetoric is pure scare tactics, we see at every level of the media when it comes to environmental issues. Green jobs aren’t saving the economy. Low-regulation states do create more jobs.