Green Fave of Obama’s Goes Under, Taxpayers Foot the Bill
Solyndra is a manufacturer of solar panels–a green technology!–and was given half a billion dollars in loan guarantees by the Federal Government. Oh, and a major Obama donor, George Kaiser, was also a financial backer of the the company. Now it looks like they’re going under:
A company that served as a showcase for the Obama administration’s effort to create jobs in clean technology shut down Wednesday, leaving 1,100 people out of work and taxpayers obligated for $535 million in federal loans.
Solyndra, a California solar panel maker, had long been an administration favorite. Over the past two years, President Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu each had made congratulatory visits to the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters….solar industry analyst Peter Lynch said that Solyndra struggled from the beginning with an imbalanced financial model.
“You make something in a factory and it costs $6, you sell it for $3, but you really, really need to sell it for $1.50 to be competitive,” Lynch said of Solyndra. “It was an insane business model. The numbers just don’t work, and they never did.”
That’s why you get a little help, right? Guess it wasn’t enough. Now the taxpayers get to foot the bill and people are wondering if there is a cover-up. There goes a quarter of that debt ceiling “savings”!
…and closer to home:
“Evergreen Solar Inc., the Massachusetts clean-energy company that received millions in state subsidies from the Patrick administration for an ill-fated Bay State factory, has filed for bankruptcy, listing $485.6 million in debt.
Evergreen, which closed its taxpayer-supported Devens factory in March and cut 800 jobs, has been trying to rework its debt for months.”
Boston Herald
On the “green” movement: I’ve been on detail for the past few months, and my daily routine has been to eat lunch in the park in front of the White House. There are protests here every day, but for the past couple of weeks the North lawn fence has been monopolized by a few hundred environmental protesters opposing the ‘tar sands’ pipeline. The protests made national news recently only because washed up actress Daryl Hannah and NASA Goddard Center head turned raving climate change lunatic Jim Hansen were among those arrested. There is a core progressive group of maybe 30-40 people in the college-age range who show up each day to film or join in the singing, presumably because they don’t have jobs and they can. Another 30-40 aging hippie crowd who walk around with tye-dye tee shirts holding signs about banning all fossil fuels and returning to an agrarian society. Around 20 shirtless men, or men wearing rags with long dirty dreadlocks smeared with dirt who look like they haven’t bathed in weeks. And a bunch of other assorted protesters against war, Bush (?), nuclear power (?), and a variety of other causes. There were three recruiters for the Communist Revolution working the crowd. One of them approached me and asked me to join, told me that capitalism caused the oil problem. I felt bad for her more than anything, she seemed very “slow” when I politely asked her to explain. She was unable to do so. One fat man walked around wearing nothing but a loincloth. A woman wearing all green and an Uncle Sam hat passed out Obama bumper stickers. The most unsettling experience was when a young man who sounded like he had been lobotomized walked up to me and asked if I knew what the… Read more »
Loan guarantees, eh? Hey, you win some. You lose some. Start-ups are a tough business as anyone who has run one will tell you.
But you guys want the feds to bat a thousand, eh? Meanwhile the Chinese get set to eat our lunch in the coming decades…
More interesting if you ask me is the EDC handouts (vs. loans) right here in RI…
http://www.pbn.com/detail/60745.html?showpoll=1
“… who walk around with tye-dye tee shirts holding signs about banning all fossil fuels and returning to an agrarian society”
Really. They should have come to Rhode Island earlier this week. Half a million Rhode Islanders would have gladly exchanged their “agrarian” (i.e., powerless) houses and jobs for the protesters’ “non-agrarian” lifestyles.
Russ – If failures are acceptable, what kind of success rate would you consider a successful return on government “investment”? Give us a number and defend it.
Hussein Obama is very much into symbolism. How about ZERO jobs created……on Labor Day.
Leaving aside the question of whether government should be in the loan guarantee business at all, there is the additional question as to why DOE omitted several crucial steps in evaluating Solyndra’s viability. One could certainly infer that the administration was looking for a way to slip a half billion to an Obama crony.
“Evergreen Solar Inc., the Massachusetts clean-energy company that received millions in state subsidies from the Patrick administration for an ill-fated Bay State factory, has filed for bankruptcy, listing $485.6 million in debt.”
And the last time the government picked a winner was????
“climate change lunatic Jim Hansen”
IN the 70’s, he was the “NASA scientist” pushing the “coming ice age”
““But we can’t stop investing in game-changing technologies that are key to America’s leadership in the global economy.”
Perhaps true, but you can stop gambling with other peoples money.
RE: Evergreen Solar – “Meanwhile the Chinese get set to eat our lunch in the coming decades…”
Well, they ate our luch with solar panels. There was no possiblity that Evergreen could meet the Chinese price, that’s why they folded. Solar just isn’t “high tech” anymore.
“there is the additional question as to why DOE omitted several crucial steps in evaluating Solyndra’s viability.”
Why? Part is lobbying, but most is “feel good”. The lobbyist indentify where the “feel good” money is and then go after it. Wonder if anyone in the “O” family had any stock?
George Kaiser, an Obama fundraiser, is a major investor in Solyndra. House Energy Committee investigators have learned that officials in the White House pressed the DOE to approve the loan guarantees despite obvious problems with Solyndra’s viability.
Posted by David P:
“George Kaiser, an Obama fundraiser, is a major investor in Solyndra. House Energy Committee investigators have learned that officials in the White House pressed the DOE to approve the loan guarantees despite obvious problems with Solyndra’s viability.”
Let us not forget that this president was weaned on Chicago politics. “You gotta pay to play”