As Tina wrote yesterday, Americans still favor government subsidies to companies unable to otherwise compete in the green-tech industry.  That may be especially true of Nancy Pelosi and her family, but not exactly for reasons of environmental improvement.  Let’s start with this report from The Hill, via Gateway Pundit and Instapundit, on the latest approved green-tech loan from the Department of Energy:

DOE announced a $737 million loan guarantee to help finance construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar-power-generating facility in Nye County, Nev. The project is sponsored by Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve.

The Energy Department said the project will result in 600 construction jobs and 45 permanent jobs.

Forty-five permanent jobs?  That puts the cost per permanent job at over $16 million, a figure that could employ perhaps a hundred people had the capital remained in the hands of the private sector that produced it.  Whatever else these green-tech loans are, they certainly are not job-creation stimulus.

But that’s not the best part.  As both Gateway Pundit and American Glob discover, one of SolarReserve’s “investment partners” is Pacific Corporate Group, through its Clean Energy and Technology Fund.  And PCG’s executive director is Ron Pelosi — brother of Nancy Pelosi’s husband.  Suddenly, this deal makes a lot more sense than spending $737 million for forty-five jobs.

This surely is just a coincidence … in the same way that the push by the Obama administration to approve a loan to a failing Solyndra backed by one of his big campaign bundlers was just a coincidence.  Recall Reason TV’s excellent video yesterday on the urban-renewal movement, in which governments seized property ostensibly to improve neighborhoods but parsed out the spoils to the politically connected ?  That’s exactly what’s going on with this program, and with Barack Obama’s demands for more blank checks for stimulus.  The only thing Obama’s stimulating is the pockets of his cronies.