Kemp’s Failing Green Companies Seeking Taxpayer Funded Capital to Survive

It was­nt that long ago, June of 2021, when Gov­er­nor Bri­an Kemp laud­ed land­ing a hydro­gen ener­gy cell-pro­duc­ing, green ener­gy man­u­fac­tur­ing plant, to be locat­ed in the town of Kings­land, locat­ed in Cam­den Coun­ty near the south­east­ern coast of Geor­gia. That day, Kemp issued a press release announc­ingPlug Pow­ersinvest­ment to build an $84 mil­lion hydro­gen man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in that small town near the port of St. Marys, along­side I‑95 near the Geor­gia-Flori­da bor­der. The plant would pro­duce hydro­gen, to be used in fuel cells to pow­er zero-emis­sion machin­ery, such as deliv­ery vehi­cles, fork­lifts, and even auto­mo­biles. Accord­ing to the plan announced by Kemp that day, Plugs $84 mil­lion plant would employ 24 Geor­gians.

Six months ear­li­er, a South Kore­an con­glom­er­ate, SK Group, invest­ed $1.5 bil­lion in Plugs abil­i­ty to help ful­fill a goal of the South Kore­an Gov­ern­ment to tran­si­tion to a hydro­gen-based econ­o­my.

Flush with cash, after announc­ing a deal with French automak­er Renault, Plug stock soared to a 15-year high.

But no stock price is sus­tain­able with­out net earn­ings. By the time of Kemps announce­ment 6 months hence, Plugs stock had spi­raled to half of its pre­vi­ous high. Plugs stock price has con­tin­ued to drop, today sit­ting at only 6% of the high expe­ri­enced a short 3 years ago.

Last month, in one day, Plugs stock price dropped 23%, this after issu­ing a press release that it would seek anoth­er $1 bil­lion in a new pub­lic offer­ing, at mar­ket price, the fire sale send­ing investors scur­ry­ing for the exits.

Obvi­ous­ly, Plug Pow­er needs finan­cial help. Today the pri­vate sec­tor sees hydro­gen fuel riski­er than the day after the Hin­den­burg dis­as­ter. There­fore, Plug is now appeal­ing for gov­ern­ment aid, and Gov­er­nor Bri­an Kemp believes Geor­gia tax­pay­ers are the ones to pay for it.

And, appar­ent­ly, that is why Cam­den Coun­ty State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steven Sainz, who rep­re­sents Kings­land and the Plug Pow­er facil­i­ty, along with five oth­er House mem­bers, dropped HB206 in the hop­per last Feb­ru­ary.

HB206 sailed through com­mit­tee and back onto the Geor­gia House floor, to be passed on March 6th of last ses­sion. The Sen­ate took up the bill the fol­low­ing day, refer­ring it to com­mit­tee where it sat as time ran out in the ses­sion last year. This year, HB206 emerged from its Sen­ate Com­mit­tee as a sub­sti­tute, mak­ing it onto the Sen­ate floor on Mon­day of this week. Imme­di­ate­ly, an emer­gency call from the Geor­gia Free­dom Cau­cus went out, focus­ing grass­roots atten­tion on var­i­ous egre­gious pro­vi­sions in the bill.

So, what is in HB206?

First of all, as passed by the REPUBLICAN-CONTROLLED Geor­gia House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, HB206 indi­cates that the pri­vate sec­tor in Amer­i­can no longer works. The same Amer­i­can pri­vate sec­tor, which begot the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, cre­at­ed the wealth and stan­dard of liv­ing Amer­i­cans enjoy today, can no longer be count­ed on to sus­tain the Amer­i­can econ­o­my, UNLESS gov­ern­ment, in this case, Geor­gia Gov­ern­ment, steps in to com­mit Geor­gia tax­pay­ers to back the financ­ing of green ener­gy com­pa­nies, which, of course by no fault of their own (Im being face­tious), can­not muster enough pri­vate invest­ment to keep their ven­tures oper­at­ing. Accord­ing to lines 128–130,

Because imple­ment­ing such improve­ments requires high up-front cap­i­tal costs with the result­ing ben­e­fits achieved only over time, such improve­ments often can­not be financed on rea­son­able terms and are there­fore not eco­nom­i­cal­ly fea­si­ble for prop­er­ty own­ers.

The prop­er­ty own­er in ques­tion here is obvi­ous­ly Plug Pow­er, its plant in Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sainz home dis­trict. So, how would HB206 do all that is intend­ed? It would do so by cre­at­ing,

com­mer­cial prop­er­ty assessed con­ser­va­tion, ener­gy, and resilien­cy devel­op­ment author­i­ties to facil­i­tate free and will­ing own­ers of agri­cul­tur­al, com­mer­cial, and indus­tri­al prop­er­ties and of mul­ti­fam­i­ly res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties with five or more dwelling units to obtain low-cost, long-term financ­ing for qual­i­fy­ing improve­ments, includ­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, water con­ser­va­tion, renew­able ener­gy, and resilien­cy improve­ments.

Well, ok, how would that work?

It would work, first by cre­at­ing an enti­ty known as, a com­mer­cial prop­er­ty assessed con­ser­va­tion, ener­gy, and resilien­cy devel­op­ment author­i­ty.

What would that author­i­ty do?

It would go about the work of indebt­ing Geor­gia tax­pay­ers uti­liz­ing prac­ti­cal­ly every form of debt instru­ment known to mankind,

And please under­stand, under HB206 a com­mer­cial prop­er­ty assessed con­ser­va­tion, ener­gy, and resilien­cy devel­op­ment author­i­ty would not mere­ly be estab­lished in the bill spon­sors home dis­trict of Cam­den Coun­ty, but also inevery coun­ty and munic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion in the State of Geor­gia!

HB206, as passed over­whelm­ing­ly by your REPUBLICAN rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the Geor­gia House, takes this idea that the pri­vate sec­tor no longer works on the road, plant­i­ng gov­ern­ment-spon­sored, pub­lic-indebt­ing agen­cies in every ham­let and hearth­stone in the state, for the pur­pose of invest­ing pub­lic funds, AT-RISK, to pro­vide bailout and/or invest­ment cap­i­tal to EVERY qual­i­fied green-for­mu­lat­ed start-up com­pa­ny, toobtain low-cost, long-term financ­ing for qual­i­fy­ing improve­ments, includ­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, water con­ser­va­tion, renew­able ener­gy, and resilien­cy improve­ments.

So, what do Geor­gia tax­pay­ers receive for all of the mon­ey they will bor­row to hand over to weak, high-risk green ven­tures such as Cam­den Coun­tys fail­ing Plug Pow­er hydro­gen man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny?

Answer: In essence noth­ing, except the poten­tial sat­is­fac­tion that one or more of these pri­vate ven­tures might even­tu­al­ly be able to sur­vive on its own busi­ness mer­its in an econ­o­my the authors of HB206 have already decid­ed can­not sup­port them. Accord­ing to Gov­er­nor Kemps 2021 press release, Plug Pow­er in Cam­den Coun­ty would only employ 24 peo­ple. At the very best, the upside for Geor­gia tax­pay­ers is there­fore that they might break even from tak­ing on all this debt. Oh, and its not just a small amount of debt, were talk­ing about. I say that because there would be NO LIMIT UPON THE AMOUNT OF REVENUE BONDS, NOTES, OR OTHER OBLIGATIONS THAT AN AUTHORITY MAY ISSUE.

Friends, I have seen egre­gious leg­is­la­tion before, but I must tell you, this one takes the cake. Even worse than HB1013 and HB520, at least those bills endeav­ored to hide their true pur­pos­es from view. HB206 puts it all right out there in plain view.

Do not mis­un­der­stand what is going on here. This is not an exam­ple of social­ism. Social­ism is entire­ly dif­fer­ent from this. HB206 passed into law is CORPORATE FASCISM. It is the use ofmas­sive cor­po­rate influ­ence to shape pub­lic pol­i­cy. HB206 is just anoth­er exam­ple of what is hap­pen­ing at prac­ti­cal­ly every lev­el of Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment. Its a cycle. A free enter­prise sys­tem cre­ates wealth. Cor­po­rate hold­ers of large wealth use it to influ­ence gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to oper­ate on their behalf. Your Geor­gia Gov­ern­ment has become a tool for cor­po­ratists to indebt you, the tax­pay­er, for their behalf. And when you decide you have had enough, the cor­po­rate eco­nom­ic engine will build a prison to house you until you have decid­ed to coop­er­ate. That is called com­mu­nism. You can­not have com­mu­nism with­out a cor­po­rate eco­nom­ic engine to pow­er it. I just described Com­mu­nist Chi­na. That is where this goes.

Kemp Blames His Bad Policy on Biden

Oh, but of course, all this is Bidens fault. The fail­ure of green com­pa­nies to sup­port their own oper­a­tions in Geor­gia has noth­ing to do with the poli­cies of Bri­an Kemp, as sup­port­ed by the Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly. Of course not. Remem­ber Riv­ian? Yes, the elec­tric truck man­u­fac­tur­er Bri­an Kemp put into busi­ness by indebt­ing the peo­ple of Geor­gia? That was May of 2022, almost two years ago.

Where is Riv­ian today? Not good, stock price down 47% since the May 2, 2022 announce­ment by Kemps Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Com­mis­sion­er.

What does Kemp say? Its all Bidens fault.

Yes, its all Bidens fault, for push­ing the EV mar­ket too fast. Notice this atti­tude, that some­how it is the gov­ern­ments respon­si­bil­i­ty to man­age the econ­o­my, pick­ing not only win­ners and losers, but entire indus­tries. This is what a so-called, con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can has become today. For­get the free-mar­ket, as if it were ever real­ly free, at least in our life­times. The Amer­i­can peo­ple, led by gov­er­nors such as Bri­an Kemp, have become sub­jects to the king. And as long as the peo­ple are fooled by the cha­rade these actors put on, noth­ing will change.

Time to Chastise

It is time to chas­tise your Geor­gia rep­re­sen­ta­tives for pass­ing such an egre­gious bill as HB206 last year. You can find how your rep­re­sen­ta­tive vot­ed rightHERE. This has to stop. Where are all the so-called con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­cans. I know of maybe a hand­ful. Dont let them fool you. It is up to you to reproach them for allow­ing some­thing like this to pass, espe­cial­ly so eas­i­ly last year. Then it is up to you to coach them back on the straight and nar­row. Reproach, then coach. That is the vot­ers respon­si­bil­i­ty.

The good news is that so many respond­ed ear­li­er in the week, call­ing their sen­a­tors when it appeared the HB206 sub­sti­tute would come up for a vote on Mon­day. Your calls made a dif­fer­ence, as they should. But for now, HB206 is not dead. It has not been tabled. It could be brought back up at any time for a vote in the Sen­ate. There are good peo­ple pro­vid­ing a con­stant vig­il at the cap­i­tal, who will let us know if some­thing changes. Remain on the alert. This is a team effort. Sine die can­not come fast enough.

I appre­ci­ate you all.