It’s not as if we haven’t already learned what a failure Barack Obama’s green-tech stimulus has been in creating jobs.  Solyndra collapsed with over a half-billion in taxpayer money out the door, wiping out a thousand jobs with it.  After spending $17.2 billion of the $38.6 billion allocated for green-jobs stimulation, the programs have created a total of just over 3500 jobs, for a price tag of $4.85 million each.  Now the Inspector General at the Department of Labor has recommended the shutdown of a green-jobs training program that has only placed 15% of its participants:

A $500 million green jobs program at the Department of Labor has so far provided only 15 percent of current participants with jobs, leading the agency’s inspector general to recommend that the bulk of the money be returned to the Treasury.

The program, which was funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aims to find employment for almost 80,000 people by providing grants for labor exchange and job training projects. With those grants expiring over the next 15 months, IG officials concluded that the program would fail to come close to that target.

So how many workers has this program actually placed?  As of June 30th … 8,035, or about a tenth of what was projected after burning through 40% of the funding.  That actually comes to a surprisingly modest $25,000 per job placement.  However, that total includes temp jobs; only 1,336 people found jobs lasting longer than 6 months.

In other words, this is just like Obamanomics in general.  It provides a short-term gimmicky gain at incredible expense that is designed to do nothing except give politicians a headline and a photo op.  It would be cheaper in the long run to buy politicians a camera and get them a blog.