Tag Archives: Solyndra

THE PATIENT DIED BUT THE OPERATION WAS A SUCCESS or How to Measure Success Like a Community Organizer

Posted on October 21, 2012 | Leave a comment

Thanks to The Foundry for this report:

So far, 36 green companies that received federal support from taxpayers have either gone bankrupt or are laying off workers and are heading for bankruptcy. This list includes only those companies that received federal money from the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy. The amount of money indicated does not reflect how much was actually received or spent but how much was offered. The amount also does not include other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies, which push the amount of money these companies have received from taxpayers even higher.

The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:

  1. Evergreen Solar ($24 million)*
  2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
  3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
  4. Beacon Power ($69 million)*
  5. AES’s subsidiary Eastern Energy ($17.1 million)
  6. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
  7. SunPower ($1.5 billion)
  8. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
  9. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
  10. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
  11. Amonix ($5.9 million)
  12. National Renewable Energy Lab ($200 million)
  13. Fisker Automotive ($528 million)
  14. Abound Solar ($374 million)*
  15. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
  16. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($6 million)
  17. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
  18. Schneider Electric ($86 million)
  19. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
  20. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
  21. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
  22. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
  23. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
  24. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
  25. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
  26. Thompson River Power ($6.4 million)*
  27. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
  28. LSP Energy ($2.1 billion)*
  29. UniSolar ($100 million)*
  30. Azure Dynamics ($120 million)*
  31. GreenVolts ($500,000)
  32. Vestas ($50 million)
  33. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($150 million)
  34. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
  35. Navistar ($10 million)
  36. Satcon ($3 million)*

*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.

Only a government could compile such a list of economic failures.  Chalk it up to economic ignorance if you wish but that is being charitable.  Taking Solyndra and A123 as examples, considerable sums of money were legally channeled away from taxpayers, to the US Treasury, to Solyndra and A123 and their founders, to the coffers of Democratic campaign funds.  That money is not going back.

Community organizing activities are constantly in need of money to support their agenda.  We learned from the book Radical-In-Chief that community organizers consider any program that brings in money to support their activist  agenda is considered a success.  Whether or not the program accomplishes its ostensive goal, in this case green energy, is secondary.

Obama scored points for himself and all Democrats for showing moral responsibility and smart government when they heralded the financial support given these companies.  Very fewof those points were  lost when the companies and programs failed.

The Party solidified its base for at least trying to do something for the environment and raised some money for campaign funding.  It’s has been a win-win for the Party, a lose-lose for the taxpaying public.

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Posted in Energy, Environment, Opinion, Political polemics

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LET’S CALL IT A DRAW

Posted on October 17, 2012 | Leave a comment

President Obama needed a clear win to stem the slide.  He didn’t get it.  As in the Biden-Ryan debate, the Republican came across as a gentleman, the Democrat as more articulate and assertive.  It is difficult to judge the net effect on the election without knowing how well informed the undecided are.  Polls show unwavering support for each candidate at around the 47% level.  It is the relatively small group of undecided voters who will determine who the next president will be.

Right out of the box Obama painted his administration as one that gave strong support to the increased use of coal, the pipeline to Canada and made expansion of exploration and drilling for domestic oil and gas a priority.  Every one of those assertions is exactly the opposite of the truth.  But how many of the undecided viewers know that?  Obama also said that what we need is efficient energy.  How many undecided voters know that wind and solar are the least efficient and that’s why they need government subsidies to exist?  How many know the Solyndra story, not just the headlines but the full story?

Two down, one to go.  If the third is anywhere close to a draw, Obama’s record on the economy will cost him the election as well it should.

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Posted in Economy, Environment, Opinion, Political polemics

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WHY ARE OBAMA’S VOTER POLLS SO STRONG WHEN HIS RECORD IS SO BAD?

Posted on September 13, 2012 | 2 comments

It’s the media, stupid!  If you are a Conservative, how much time do you spend watching MSNBC?  And when you do, do you believe anything they say?  But what if it were all true?  And you believed it.  It would be a whole different world.  You would detest FOX News and be disgusted by Republicans.  Welcome to that world, you may not be of it but you are in it.

Fast and Furious never happened, Solyndra was a vast right wing conspiracy to spread dirt on Obama, and the President is a friend of Israel because he said so.  Tea Party demonstrators spat on Black Caucus members and screamed anti-gay epithets at them as they strolled from their offices to the State House.  Christianity is a threat to our freedoms and Republican obstructionism is the reason the economy is anemic and unemployment is so high.  If you are unable to see how hard Obama is trying to improve the world, if you can’t see that his steps are the correct ones, there can be but one reason and one alone for your blindness – racism.

If you are a modern Democrat, these are your beliefs.  Your media reinforces them.  You spend little or no time with media that doesn’t.  There is no neutral objective media any longer, none.  There is no comfortable place you can go to hear the other side of an issue.

Obama is a very charismatic man.  Women fainted at his 2008 campaign speeches; men get tingles up their legs.  Delegates cried listening to his 2012 acceptance speech.  His blackness satisfies a longing in the Liberal heart for release from guilt.  He is a force for good.  Therefore, any opposition to Obama is a force against all that is fair and right.  Put this all together and you see the man can do no wrong.  The Right dubbed him Messiah for a reason and the left has never denied it.

President Obama says the financial crisis that brought the economy down was created by the policies of his predecessors and was so devastating it was impossible to clean it up in four years.  And the word of a Messiah is truth.  The worse the economy is now, the more important it is not to put the people  back in office that caused it.

For the “True Believer” the joblessness, soaring debt and the poor economy only reinforces the need to re-elect the President.  But there is another much more alarming reason for the strength of the President’s polls.  The United States may have reached “Tocqueville Time.”  But that’s for another post.

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Posted in Economy, Opinion

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MY 2 CENTS ON “YOU DIDN’T BUILD THAT”

Posted on July 26, 2012 | 1 comment

 

“People know that vast personal incomes come not only through the effort or ability or luck of those who receive them, but also because of the opportunities for advantage which Government itself contributes.  Therefore, the duty rests upon the Government to restrict such incomes by very high taxes.”

Who said that?  It was not our current president.  Here’s a clue – It was the only President in our history who presided over an even longer economic recovery than Barack Obama.  It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt in an address to Congress in 1935.  It is no coincidence that the economic policies of both presidents failed.  Minds that think alike produce results that look alike.  Roosevelt ordered thousands of young pigs to be destroyed to raise the price of pork – in a depression!  Obama ordered thousands of serviceable cars destroyed which raised the cost of transportation for lower income families — in a recession.

As the opening quote attests, Roosevelt sought to siphon money from the employer class to pay for federal government programs.  Obama seeks to do the same.  Roosevelt’s plan for recovery was to put people to work on the taxpayer’s payroll, not in the private sector.  See the CCC and WPA.  Obama’s plan is to rebuild roads and bridges (WPA) and subsidize unprofitable environmental programs like the Solyndra (CCC).

Roosevelt took measures later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.  See The Schechter Brothers and the NRA (National Industrial Recovery Act).  Obama has also been at odds with the Supreme Court.  Both presidents felt restrained by the Court, as well they should.  The Court is there to protect the people from an overreaching government.  Both presidents sought powers beyond those stipulated by our founders, albeit for different reasons.

When two presidents think so much alike and manage economic recoveries with results that are so much alike, it’s not coincidence.  It’s because their policies don’t work.  And what are those different reasons?  Roosevelt’s goal was to restore the economy and benefit lower income workers.  He just didn’t know how to do it.  Obama’s goal is to put a choker on capitalism and completely transform America.  He knows what he is doing.  It’s up to the voters not to let him do it.

 

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Posted in Economy, Opinion, Political philosophy, Political polemics

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IS THERE NO SHAME?

Posted on March 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

There comes a point when the bigger and bolder the lie the harder it is to disbelieve.  There was a movie made with a scene that illustrates the point very well.  It may have been How to Cheat On your Wife with Bobby Morse, I’m not sure.  The scene starts with a man and woman enjoying each other’s company naked in bed.  The man’s wife comes home unexpectedly with grocery bags in hand and catches the pair before they can get out of bed.

The wife launches into a series of furious tirades.  Without returning a glance or uttering a word the cheating pair fly out of the sack, dress, and make up the bed.  All the time this is happening, the wife is right there screaming bloody murder at the two of them.  Shortly the bed is made, the woman is gone and the husband is relaxing in his usual chair reading the evening paper as his wife continues her angry rant.  He lowers the paper and asks “What’s the matter dear?”  His wife comes down an octave and yells something about “That #%&*  woman…” “What woman?” he asks.  “There’s no other woman here.”

The episode ends with the wife taking a puzzled look into the bedroom which appears completely undisturbed, heaving a sigh and calmly asking “What would you like for dinner dear?”  The point is if you are bold enough to tell a lie that is big enough with a face that is blank enough to a person who is gullible enough and wants to believe you enough, and then if you are dishonest enough to try it, you just may get away with it with many people.

Anyone who knows Barack Obama is President of the United States knows he has been adamantly opposed to completion of the Keystone Pipeline.  He still is.  He gave a speech in Cushing, Oklahoma declaring he is giving a fast tract to the project but the truth is he is blocking it.  Obama has approved a portion of the line over which his approval is not needed and continues to deny approval for the portion where his approval is needed.

There are sufficient oil reserves on U.S. territory to meet 100% of our domestic demand for 200 years.  Obama says repeatedly that we have just 2% of the world’s reserves and use 20% of the supply.

The Obama administration has not laid down one inch of pipeline.  Obama says he has lain so much pipeline that it would reach around the world.

Obama says domestic oil production has risen during his tenure.  That’s true.  It has risen in spite of his efforts to stop it.  Production from land subject to Federal leases has declined.  The only increase has been on private lands over which Obama has no control.

Obama specifically chose Solyndra to be the poster boy for his administration’s government green energy program.  He flew to California to give a long speech at a Solyndra plant holding the company up as one of the finest examples of what his administration is doing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  Now he says “this was not our program” then blames the Chinese for its failure.

Let’s hope the lies are told often enough that voters will see through them enough to throw the bum out of office.  We have had enough!

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BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND – NOT

Posted on March 13, 2012 | 1 comment

Wind power is:

Unreliable
Economically unfeasible
Incapable of ever producing meaningful volume

In can only exist with government subsidies which means an entire industry is dependant on getting money from the government for their existence.  That is never a healthy thing.  Favoritism is the kindest word to describe what this inevitably leads to.  Need I say “Solyndra”?

A company that does not need to make a profit in its own right is not a healthy thing either.  If you have to make a profit, in a free-market society you have to produce a product or service that has value beyond its price or no one will buy it.  When no profit is required, that discipline is missing.  Your continued existence is dependent on your relationship with the federal government, not on the efficacy of your product.  There is no need to add value to society.

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Posted in Cartoons, Energy, Opinion

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FASCISM IN AMERICA

Posted on November 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota, says he is leaving the United States, labeling it a fascist nation.  Anger over dismissal of his lawsuit against Homeland Security’s TSA for unnecessary groping that led Ventura to make the outlandish accusation about the USA.  But let’s take a look.  It may not be as outlandish as it seems.

Few words are as carelessly and callously thrown about as is the word fascist.  The term “fascist pig” is commonly enough applied to conservatives to be included in the online Urban Dictionary as an identifier for right wing thinkers.  In this use, fascist is purely an epithet, an insult.  The word has been detached from its meaning, just as calling someone a bastard is no longer a reference to the circumstances of his birth.  The distortion of bastard is complete but the meaning of the term fascist is still in transition.

Merriam Webster defines fascism as:

a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.  (emphasis is ours)

Benito Mussolini bragged that he had made Italy a Fascist nation before WW II.  The left enthusiastically embraced the idea at the time.  Mussolini’s version brought the means of production under government control whereby assets owned by the private sector could be converted to the public good without the need to nationalize and pay for them.  Mussolini’s fascism was a central planning concept.

Ventura’s assertion doesn’t look so quite so outlandish in this light.  Remember Hugo Chavez’s expression of admiration and envy when Barack Obama gained control of General Motors without violence or force, without even paying for it through nationalization.  That’s the appeal of fascism.  If you can have the milk without buying the cow, why buy the cow?

Does any objective and knowledgeable person doubt that the Solyndra Corporation was a tool of the Obama administration?  It was the poster boy for the president’s green energy program.  He chose a Solyndra facility as the location for a speech touting government commitment to financing green corporations like Solyndra at a company facility.  The company owed its very existence to the government, short lived though it was.  Some of that money was expected to find its way back in campaign contributions.  We only know about the Solyndra affair because it blew up.  How many others are there that we don’t know about?

If fascism is government control of privately held assets, then wouldn’t preventing Boeing from building airplanes in the state of their choice be a fascist act.

Jesse Ventura, you misused the term but thank you for bringing up the point.  However, I would have more respect for you if stayed to fight and not just whine and leave.

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WHAT FREE MARKETS? NOT HERE.

Posted on October 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

When Sen. Dick Durbin stood up in the Senate chamber and told the American public not to do business with a bank he didn’t like, he threatened the free market system.  When the President of the United States confirmed and added to the senator’s condemnation, the free market system ceased to exist.

Free is free.  Half free is not free.  What we have is coercive capitalism, a form of fascism where private ownership of the means of production of goods and services is allowed, but where management is not free to follow the dictates of the market.  This, along with crony capitalism has been described by some as the new face of socialism in America.

John Hinderaker at Power Line has written an excellent piece that begins “Nice Bank You Have Here…, a shame if anything should happen to it… The Democrats took gangster government to a new level today…”  It’s an excellent post and falls into the category of required reading.  Don’t miss it.


Socialist leaders have long realized the challenge of establishing the Marxist form of socialism in a democracy like the United States is an insurmountable one.  A strong and prosperous middle class would never willingly accept a government that would appropriate ownership of private enterprise.  The alternatives are to employ force with a violent revolution (a very bad choice) or to allow private ownership but control it.

Control comes in many forms.  Durbin-Obama coercion is just one of them.  Other means of control include appointing czars to oversee various industries, misuse of executive orders, outright flaunting of established law and the passing of bills that are vague, thereby leaving the specifics to be set by the whims of the bureaucracy as dictated from above.  Go along get along becomes a near necessity.  Those who do more than go along, get along even better.  From Solyndra to GE, this is the new face of socialism in America.

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Posted in News, Opinion, Political polemics, Regulation, Videos

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THE SOLYNDRA AFFAIR

Posted on September 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money for one man to contribute to a candidate’s campaign fund.  But it is money well spent if it helps you get half of a billion dollars in stimulus money to develop a company you are promoting.

Solyndra was the poster child for Barack Obama’s Green Energy Stimulus program.  In May of last year the President splashed across the news with great fanfare and with great pride as he told the nation this was his move to save the planet and create brand new jobs.  Now, less than 16 months later, the company is bankrupt and 1,100 workers were suddenly thrown out of work with no advance notice.  Furthermore, It looks like the taxpayers will be out $535,000,000.

Rich Lowry reports

In a visit to Solyndra in May 2010, President Obama called it “a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism.” He all but redefined the traditional statement of Americanness to encompass motherhood, apple pie, and the conversion of sunlight into electricity through cylindrical thin-film solar cells, the specialty of Solyndra.

Obama and Biden were literally invested in Solyndra’s success. The company got a half-billion-dollar federal loan guarantee, the first in a highly vaunted Department of Energy green-jobs program, as part of the stimulus. This was supposed to be the new economic model: government and its favored industries cooperating to lead the country into a green, politically approved recovery.

What can you expect from a business plan to make little solar panels at a cost of $6.29 per energy unit, get a government subsidy to cover half the cost, and then offer the product for sale at $3.24 in a market where the competition is selling it for $1.75?  It gets worse.  Solyndra is backed by one of Obama’s key fundraisers, George Kaiser of Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Rich Lowry says this is Obama’s Enron, Power Line blog likens it to the Keating Savings and Loan political scandal.

From the Washington Post via American Thinker

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of the oversight and investigations subcommittee, wrote to the White House, “We have learned from our investigation that White House officials monitored Solyndra’s application, and communicated with DOE and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) officials. Documents received by the Committee also show that DOE and OMB officials were aware of the White House’s interest in the Solyndra loan guarantee.”

Solyndra’s shuttering has also raised concerns about the status of tens of billions the Obama administration has invested in other renewable-energy companies.

There is one difference between Keating or Enron and Solyndra; the press is not likely to run hard with the Solyndra affair.

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