Did Rolls-Royce Receive $4 Million from the Department of Commerce?

Sometimes you can misread something. I have read this over and over and still think I must not be understanding it. I must be wrong. I have to be.

Commerce Secretary John Bryson made a blog entry on March 9th about Obama's visit to Rolls-Royce's Crosspointe facility in Prince George’s County, Virginia. Later in the post he tells how the DoC invested ( gave? ) $4 million dollars to Crosspointe for the creation of the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM). So I made that jump that Crosspointe means Rolls-Royce. And doesn't "Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing" sound like it is straight out of "1984" or "Atlas Shrugged?" Commonwealth. A scary term when bandied about by the government.

What is the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing?

... an applied research center developed by eight companies, the state of Virginia, and three leading state universities ...

What does it do? The best I can tell from all of the double-speak and puffed up sentences, it will train local community college students in manufacturing jobs. I thought you went to college so that you didn't have to work in manufacturing.

Regardless of that, if Rolls-Royce wanted to put $4 million into this project they should use their own money. If the Department of Commerce wants to put $4 million of our tax dollars into this, why are they funneling it through Rolls-Royce?

Even worse, during this visit Obama announced a $1-billion proposal for a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI). It is intended to create and link 15 of these CCAM type centers together to make some sort of wonderful magical fairyland manufacturing hubs.

The administration has completely lost its senses and believes this will bolster innovation and competitiveness. They believe that U.S. manufacturing is one big team against the world. So much for Obama going from country to country apologizing to them for U.S. behavior. This is literally a "U.S. against the world" project.

This plan is completely counter to the fact that companies in the U.S. compete with each other. Anything innovative gets patented. That is how you get an edge. Each company tries to be the best. They do not share their latest and greatest ideas. They keep them to themselves and make money off of it.

Then again, maybe I misread this. Please tell me I misread this nightmare!