Obama Discovers Turbines But Doesn't Realize What Makes Them Spin

President Obama recently went to Schenectady, NY to a General Electric factory to talk about how he wants to create jobs. So there he was pointing to a huge turbine and saying how GE was selling a bunch of them, and he wanted to see more of that to keep the 1200 workers busy, and maybe even enabler GE to hire some more.

There’s only one problem with Mr. Obama’s new found infatuation with turbines. Other policies of his will destroy the turbine business.

The turbines he was standing in front of at the GE plant were steam turbines that will be used to turn an electric generator. Steam turbines are powered by - - steam. That steam comes from a boiler that burns something to heat the water. In the case of electric generators, fifty percent of the time the steam boiler burns coal; the other fifty percent use oil and natural gas. Mr. Obama is a known environmental extremist, and has stated that he wants to bankrupt the coal industry as well as block any future coal fired power plants. Oil and natural gas are also on his hit list. So if those Obama policies succeed, there will be no steam turbine market and all of those 1200 workers at the GE turbine plant in Schenectady will be out of a job!

This is stunning incoherence from a President of the United States. On the one hand he makes no bones about wanting to bankrupt or other wise eliminate the coal industry and coal fired power plants because he thinks they hurt the environment, and on the other hand he extols the benefits of a factory building the steam turbines used in those coal fired power plants as a good thing because they create jobs!!

Is Obama, billed by his supporters as the smartest man on planet Earth, so clueless that he really can’t see the inter-relationship between coal and steam turbines and jobs for workers making those turbines, or does he think he can talk out of both sides of his mouth and we won’t be able to figure it out? You decide.