There is considerable buzz in Washington about the disclosures of Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lee Zeldin on controversial grants by the Biden Administration, including the $50 million environmental justice grant to an organization that believes “climate justice travels through a Free Palestine.” However, one item was particularly notable: $160 million to a Canadian electric bus manufacturer which later announced bankruptcy without fulfilling the contract.
Both the Obama and Biden Administration wasted billions in loans and grants on green initiatives including the failed solar-panel company Solyndra and most recently the termination of the Ivanpah Solar Power Plant.
These projects often start with photo ops and virtue signaling that costs taxpayers billions in losses. What is missing is a modicum of economic and administrative judgment.
The Canadian electric bus company Lion Electric is such an example. Figures like Vice President Kamala Harris did repeated photo ops with electric buses as a defining issue. However, the company struggled from the start and the Biden Administration failed to take the most basic steps to protect taxpayer money. Rather than break up payments in segments based on actual production, Biden officials just sent the $160 million to the company.
The company is now shutting down without supplying $95 million in bus orders. The money is gone. Poof! and the company could vanish with the “Lion’s share” of U.S. public funds.
At the same time, the Administration pushed local and state governments to buy electric vehicles. Many blue cities went all-in but then had to spend more money to deal with the failures. Cities like Asheville, North Carolina, spent millions to buy more expensive electric buses only to find that they had to be recharged every 70 miles. Three out of five buses quickly broke down and could not be repaired because the company, Proterra, also filed for bankruptcy.
The concerning aspect of the Lion Corp payments is the apparent negligence of government officials in the handling of U.S. funds. Average Americans in contracting for their homes would require more assurances than what was allegedly demanded by the EPA.
Such accounts are likely to be cited in cases where Democratic groups are fighting to force agencies to continue to pay out money after court injunctions. The argument of the Trump Administration is that it wants to freeze expenditures as it reviews these contracts. In all likelihood, it will be able to accomplish such inspections and reviews as this litigation shakes out in the courts. It may result in some resumption of funding in the interim either by court order or waivers from the Administration, as done for health programs under the US AID.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Makes you wonder…if this EV bus company was “such a good idea” why didn’t the Canadian government not give them the money?
Can’t can’t figure that out for yourself?
In 2020 Biden beat trump by over 7 million votes
in 2024 trump beat Harris by 2.2 million votes.
How is trumps victory in 2024 epic, generational, a landslide, the greatest victory ever. And Biden’s victory in 2020 not more of all of those.
Is trump boastful when he barely won? Is trump lying?
For one thing Trump won all 7 swing states. You can then add in the fact that Biden beat Trump by about 4 million votes in just California, a state that has no voter I.D., counts votes for weeks and sends mail in ballots to everyone. Now factor in that states like PA changed their rules in the run up to the election, GA had some questionable actions, as did AZ, Zuckerberg gave 400 million to various Dem state parties to run elections, the “51 intelligence officers” lied about the laptop, old Twitter censored any accounting of the laptop and the media en masse lied about it as well.
On top of all of the above remember that Democrats used Covid to make mail in ballots without signature identifications and also to crush a strong economy by closing down all blue cities and states.
HullBobby,
Well said!!
From the EPA to Lion Electric to CAA Talent Agency to Biden. Really quite simple. That Lion Electric is a Canadian company is a feature, not a bug. Wash, rinse, repeat.
hey when you can print money, why care
Mama always said it was the thought that counts. I suspect many are still counting their piece of the green deal pie.
After we read nightmare stories like this we then get the media trying to spoon feed us stories like the one about a woman in Thailand who died because she couldn’t get the oxygen she needed due to Trump cutting USAID funds. Or CNN showing a warehouse full of three million dollars worth of drugs that are now out of date due to Trump forgetting or ignoring the fact that the drugs have a three year shelf life, have been sitting in the warehouse for years and Trump has been in office for a month.
As others have said, this is more than mismanagement or negligence, this is out and out money laundering and theft. Who got the money, who did they hire and who did they contribute to over the last 4 years?
The one good thing to come out of this blatant criminality is that the Democrats are so dumb and desperate that they are taking to the streets to defend this obvious scandal. Democrats ought to change their name to the 20/80 party because they seem to be dying on all of the 80/20 hills.
Do you remember trump owning a hotel in DC when he was last president? Anybody that wanted to do business with trump stayed at that hotel. Why would they do that? Was President trump gaining financial gain from anyone wanting to curry favor?
Did you buy your $trump coin yet? How much of that goes to trump?
Too bad you can’t buy trump steaks, fly on trump air, go to trump U anymore. They are among the many bankruptcies of trump.
Hey pal, you are saying that the $500 a night rooms are equivalent to 130 MILLION to bus companies, 9 MILLION to Politico, MILLIONS to BBC, AP and the Times, as well as BILLIONS to fake LGBTQ groups in third world lands?
Keep talking genius.
Well said, HB. 🤙
Remember Pork Barrell politics?
The Green New Deal. Whenever government announces a ‘new deal’ of any sort, it should be taken as an announcement of potentially a ‘new fleecing’ of the citizens. And the less tangible the goals, the more likely the fleecing. As in comparing the tangible goals of the Manhattan Project and the Interstate Highway System to the goals of dropping the average temperature of the earth a few degrees in one hundred years.
Echoes of Solyndra!
“Are you crazy or just plain stupid?” (Forrest Gump)
Are government workers just that crazy? Perhaps so. Or could their be a malevolent motive such as the following legend.
“Vladimir Lenin was asked how he planned to “hang all the capitalists” in the face of a rope shortage in the young Soviet Union, he replied, “Don’t worry comrade, the capitalists will sell us the rope.”
After you find and delete a few dozen $100M corrupt funding, you approach saving some real money.
And of course it snowballs, finding some corruption leads to other corruption disclosures.
That’s a great point, Gary. Additionally, as this process continues to play out, as the People are seeing example after example, everyday, nonstop, the impact this will have on our culture of dependence on government will be transformational. Instead of reflexively accepting government “investment” as a public good, the default will become one of extreme skepticism.
Remember the Project Veritas video of a guy in the Biden Administration EPA, who PV said is named Brent Efron, characterizing the effort to push the money out the door as “throwing gold bars off the Titanic” and as an “insurance policy” against Trump?
70 miles???
Who would pay a nickel for that? But our government paid billions?
That’s criminal negligence if it’s not fraud.
That reminds me of a Russian mafia Joke. “Dimitri that is a fine Rolex! What did you pay for it?”
“Thank you Vladimir! I bought it at the store on that corner. It only cost me 150,000 dollars!”
“150,000!!!!! Oh Dimitri, you could have gone to the store across the street and got it for 200,000.”
At least this total incompetence is now being exposed. Hopefully, the exposure will outrage enough people to reduce the amount of waste.
BIDEN/New Deal Funding, as Jonthan pointed out, similar results, FAILURE/Bankruptcies. Every project is now having financial issues, discontinuation, operating and mechanical issues, requires more and more money only to be flushed down the toilet. Solar Farms, Wind Mills etc. all shutting down or major mechanical issues with the big wind blades failures. But main the question who is getting Rich on these projects consultants, friends. NGO’s are getting caught, their websites are being wiped clean or deleted. DOGE indicates they are tracking down the money and they are using technology that will track it, it goes deep and fast and will uncover where the $$$$ went. I guess this is one of the reasons Google indicated in the DC area searches for Criminal and RICO Law firms is 4 times higher than any place else, a lot of greedy Elites and etc. know?
When will they reach the bottom of, what appears to be, a bottomless pit of corruption and incompetence all wrapped up in an ideological agenda.
It does make you wonder if any of this money is getting to where it says it went. Or are we just a laundering? I think the laundromat needs to be closed permanently
But if we did, where would Maxine get money for those horrible wigs?
Lion Electric was also one of the State of Illinois’ marquis, subsidized green projects, celebrated by Gov. Pritzker. Its US manufacturing plant is in IL.
Another taxpayer funded green initiative goes bust,,,I’m shocked!
PERFECT!!
“apparent negligence of government officials” ? This was all by design.