Another Obama electric car 'investment' bust

CBS News:

Elkhart, Indiana lost jobs faster than any other city in the country in 2009. Both Democrats and Republicans promised to re-energize manufacturing in the city, backing a new electric car plant. But as CBS News investigated, instead of a boom, things went bust.

With unemployment peaking above 20 percent, Elkhart, Indiana was at the white-hot center of the economic meltdown, and a natural launch point for President Obama's electric vehicle initiative.

" So that's why I'm here today," the president said three years ago. "To announce $2.4 billion in highly competitive grants."

Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels was also on board in convincing Norwegian company Think Global to open a plant in Elkhart to build Think City electric cars with a sticker price of about $42,000.

As incentive, the federal government offered Think City $17 million in stimulus tax credits.

Dorinda Heiden-Guss heads up the local economic development effort. "We were excited," she said. "We were invigorated at a very devastating time."

But it turns out the company had a checkered track record, including three previous bankruptcies. We recently visited Think City's Indiana plant, and here's what we found: a largely empty warehouse.

Everybody hoped that by this time there would be more than 400 workers inside a bustling plant. Instead, today, there are just two workers at Think City. Rodney and Josh are slowly finishing assembly on a few dozen 2011 models shipped in from Norway.

We were able to drive a Think City car around the empty space where investors once envisioned an assembly line churning out 20,000 vehicles a year.

Now in its fourth bankruptcy, Think Global has been bought by a Russian investor who didn't return our calls.

... 

Obama may set the record for the worst investment portfolio in history.  His belief in a "clean tech" business model is seriously misguided.  The list of failures is long and undistinguished.  But, he wants to raise taxes on real job creators so he can make more such "investments."  Obama needs to be sent back to the private sector so he can lose his own money on these boondoggles.

BTW, the main reason that Elkhart has such high unemployment is that Obama and other Democrats drove the price of gas up to a point that it killed the low to medium priced recreational vehicle business that was the mainstay of the economy in the city.  It would not surprise me if the facility the electric car maker is using was probably formerly used for making RVs.  This was a deliberate policy by the Democrats to strangle domestic  oil and gas production and push people into electric vehicles that people did not want.