Schwarzenegger telling Indians fairy tales about "booming" green economy in California

 “This is how they greeted me in Delhi", wrote the Terminator on his Twitter account

Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday gave a keynote speech at the "12th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit" in Delhi, organized by R.K. Pachauri´s TERI institute. In his speech the former California governor praised the green economy in his home state:

 "The measures taken in California have brought the state in the forefront of green movement in the US. Green economy is booming with 10 times more jobs in green sector and 40 percent more energy efficiency."

However, the Terminator appears to have a rather selective view of the "booming" California economy. Here are some facts which he chose not include in his keynote speech:

In the Bay Area as in much of the country, the green economy is not proving to be the job-creation engine that many politicians envisioned. President Obama once pledged to create five million green jobs over 10 years. Gov. Jerry Brown promised 500,000 clean-technology jobs statewide by the end of the decade. But the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream.   
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Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter, according to the State Department of Community Services and Development.      
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Job training programs intended for the clean economy have also failed to generate big numbers. The Economic Development Department in California reports that $59 million in state, federal and private money dedicated to green jobs training and apprenticeship has led to only 719 job placements — the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one.

PS
     
Maybe the Terminator was actually thinking about a new kind of "booming" green economy waiting to become reality?:

Last week, more than 200 prisoners at California’s notorious San Quentin State Prison turned out for a “green jobs” fair. The soon-to-be-released felons were greeted by representatives from several nonprofit groups and training programs, all offering advice and information about the ecologically friendly employment opportunities that supposedly await the men beyond the prison's gates.
The inmates of San Quentin also took part in psychobabble discussion groups. An examination of the topics presented included growing your own food will save money; watching plants grow will develop patience; gardening will teach tolerance toward plants and people; and another that literally promised, “smelling the plants changes behavior.”
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The way utopian-minded non-profits like Planting Justice and Insight Garden Program see the world is, if we’ll just give an ex-con a bag of vegetable seeds upon release, he’ll grow his own food, save money, be more patient and tolerant, his overall behavior will forever be altered, and his criminal ways will be a distant image in the rearview mirror of life.

If only it were so easy.

Forgive me for being cynical, but my antenna is way up. Seems to me, if anything, Planting Justice and the Insight Garden Program may be unknowingly preparing some of these prisoners to become master growers of marijuana and poppy plants.

Read the entire article here