3:24 PM (39 minutes ago)
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The Obama administration is using prison labor to advance its green energy agenda, enriching foreign companies and some of the president’s largest campaign donors in the process.
Federal Prison Industries, most commonly known by the trade name UNICOR, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. Department of Justice. Established by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1934, UNICOR was intended as a voluntary work-training program for federal inmates. It has recently gone into business supplying federal agencies with green energy technology such as solar panels.
Hundreds of federal inmates earn between $0.23 and $1.15 per hour manufacturing solar panels at UNICOR facilities in New York and Oregon. The panels are then sold to a variety of government agencies, which are obligated by law to purchase them.
One of the alleged rationales for the program is to allow federal agencies to purchase domestically produced solar panels at an affordable price. UNICOR’s website insists its solar panels “are domestically sourced and produced, meeting the requirements of the Buy American Act, Trade Agreement Act, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
However, the agency signed a five-year $219 million contract in 2009 with Taiwan-based Motech Industries to provide the individual solar cells used to assemble the panels.
It is a common trick employed to get around “Buy American” restrictions, said Rep. Bill Huizenga (R., Mich.). Products manufactured using foreign components still qualify if they are physically assembled in the United States. “It’s yet another outrage on what is happening with our tax dollars,” he told the Washington Free Beacon. Huizenga has sponsored legislation to reform UNICOR in an effort to ensure that prison labor “is not taking business away from the private sector.”
UNICOR typically partners with private companies to install the panels and help the agencies put in place other energy-saving measures. Major beneficiaries of this system include Constellation Energy, which was recently acquired by the Exelon Corporation, a Chicago-based utility provider with deep ties to the Obama administration.
Less than two week after the two firms finalized their merger, Constellation won a 20-year contract to provide renewable energy to 10 State Department facilities, including its Foggy Bottom headquarters, as well as a portion of the White House campus.
The “first-of-its-kind federal contract” will help the department contribute to President Obama’s executive order mandating a 28-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, according to a company press release. It will also spur the development of several new green energy projects facilities, including a 5-megwatt solar project in New Jersey that will use panels provide by UNICOR.
An excerpt, a lot more at http://freebeacon.com/green-
Federal Prison Industries, most commonly known by the trade name UNICOR, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. Department of Justice. Established by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1934, UNICOR was intended as a voluntary work-training program for federal inmates. It has recently gone into business supplying federal agencies with green energy technology such as solar panels.
Hundreds of federal inmates earn between $0.23 and $1.15 per hour manufacturing solar panels at UNICOR facilities in New York and Oregon. The panels are then sold to a variety of government agencies, which are obligated by law to purchase them.
One of the alleged rationales for the program is to allow federal agencies to purchase domestically produced solar panels at an affordable price. UNICOR’s website insists its solar panels “are domestically sourced and produced, meeting the requirements of the Buy American Act, Trade Agreement Act, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
However, the agency signed a five-year $219 million contract in 2009 with Taiwan-based Motech Industries to provide the individual solar cells used to assemble the panels.
It is a common trick employed to get around “Buy American” restrictions, said Rep. Bill Huizenga (R., Mich.). Products manufactured using foreign components still qualify if they are physically assembled in the United States. “It’s yet another outrage on what is happening with our tax dollars,” he told the Washington Free Beacon. Huizenga has sponsored legislation to reform UNICOR in an effort to ensure that prison labor “is not taking business away from the private sector.”
UNICOR typically partners with private companies to install the panels and help the agencies put in place other energy-saving measures. Major beneficiaries of this system include Constellation Energy, which was recently acquired by the Exelon Corporation, a Chicago-based utility provider with deep ties to the Obama administration.
Less than two week after the two firms finalized their merger, Constellation won a 20-year contract to provide renewable energy to 10 State Department facilities, including its Foggy Bottom headquarters, as well as a portion of the White House campus.
The “first-of-its-kind federal contract” will help the department contribute to President Obama’s executive order mandating a 28-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, according to a company press release. It will also spur the development of several new green energy projects facilities, including a 5-megwatt solar project in New Jersey that will use panels provide by UNICOR.
An excerpt, a lot more at http://freebeacon.com/green-
