To the Editor:
I was watching “On the Record” on Channel 5 Sunday with Gov. Deval Patrick. They were discussing how the Commonwealth has to cut aid to cities and towns as part of his package to bring down the state deficit.
Does this include Green Energy programs like the Evergreen Solar company that asked for $58 million of taxpayer money to put the state on the cutting edge of solar technology.
And, four years after getting the grant, the company is closing its manufacturing jobs here in the state (800 jobs lost) and taking them overseas. Why?
Cheap labor, and guess what, the company is only required to pay back $4 million of the grant.
Now that’s making money. I can see the same kind of manipulation in the Cape Wind project. In fact, Cape Wind has already sold half of the project and lined their pockets with large profits. How many millions of dollars of Massachusetts taxpayers’ money does this private company want? The Big Dig, Evergreen Solar, and I’m sure Cape Wind will leave a sour taste in the taxpayers’ mouths.
All this is done under the guise of clean energy. The windmill project is only about gaining green credits. The more green credits an oil-burning company has or can acquire, the more oil they can burn. It’s a government mandate to have green credits.
I hope Gov. Patrick looks at the solar company situation before he gives any more private companies our tax money in the name of clean energy.
Until our government stops companies from moving overseas in the name of more profit, what’s left of the middle class (which has carried this country back from the Depression through the world wars until the present) will not be big enough to carry us out of this Wall Street-made mess.
They are smiling, we are crying.
Glenn Pachico
Vineyard Haven
