As if President Obama didn’t have enough bad news last week, Solyndra, which manufactures solar panels, filed for bankruptcy and laid off almost its entire work force of 1,100. Going down the tubes with it, of course, is a $535 million loan that was guaranteed by the federal government as part of the stimulus program.
And it seems the White House put pressure on the Department of Energy to OK the loan.This is looking more and more like ‘Chicago Way’ political patronage; the president rewarding his friends. Even if it wasn’t, it is still criminally stupid
While Energy Department officials steadfastly vouched for Solyndra — even after an earlier round of layoffs raised eyebrows — other federal agencies and industry analysts for months questioned the viability of the company. Peter Lynch, a longtime solar industry analyst, told ABC News the company’s fate should have been obvious from the start.
“Here’s the bottom line,” Lynch said. “It costs them $6 to make a unit. They’re selling it for $3. In order to be competitive today, they have to sell it for between $1.5 and $2. That is not a viable business plan.” (Obama’s Patronage Pigs Can’t Fly)As stated in the article, no investment officer would have granted such a loan, and if she did, she would be fired for gross incompetency. In fact, said loan officer would end up on the business end of a federal lawsuit for such bald-faced malfeasance. Government bureaucrats who produce nothing and who pay no price for wasting billions of taxpayer dollars are woefully ill-equipped to pick winners and losers.
This was just one company. Imagine the money-wasting debacle an Obama “Jobs” program would be. Corruption, fraud and waste on a grand national scale. This and other government-sponsored financial fiascos argues against giving one more dime to the Obama Administration for a "jobs" program.
Accountability at the Local Level
The way you build infrastructure is at the local and state level, in discrete pieces as its done now. Those projects are funded by taxes and people hold governors and mayors responsible for the efficient completion of such projects. Accountability at the local level. The state has a budget and the government has a vested interest in getting the project done ahead of time and on-budget. It’s a model that has worked well. When it doesn’t, people get voted out of office, or worse, put on trial and sent to jail.
How do the states fund these projects? Revenues from working people and the businesses that hire them. No economic activity, no revenue. Create a favorable climate for the jobs providers and the rest will take care of itself.
42 comments:
Will the GOP bring this information to the fore before the 2012 election? And will America care?
At this point, I doubt that any Obama supporters can be swayed from voting for him again. **sigh**
Happened with Evergreen Solar in Massachusetts also. Doesn't have anything to do with crony capitalism.
CHINA OWNS THIS INDUSTRY AND IS CLEANING OUR CLOCK.
We can't compete. Simple as that. Much larger issue than the damn simpletons whining about Obama. The right will whine but they have been part of the fight to prevent this industry from being established in America so be a little circumspect about your part in this.
Funny to see a righty outraged about an alternative energy story such as this, lol!
Ducky:
You need to look up the definition of whine. This is a presentation of facts.
This is a whine:
"CHINA OWNS THIS INDUSTRY AND IS CLEANING OUR CLOCK.
We can't compete.
Bwahahahaha!!!
Why can't we compete, Ducky? China's blatant currency manipulation is partly to blame, for sure, but you're telling me you can find no fault here at home?
Bd: Half a billion in taxpayer funds down the toilet because Obama wanted to reward his jolly green elves could only be funny to a liberal living off the dole.
What I'm telling you Colorado is that the solar industry in Massachusetts was wiped out by Chinese competition pure and simple.
It had nothing to do with the funding method.
I'm not saying the funding method is to blame. What I am saying is that we should be looking at what causes us to be uncompetitive globally.
"This and other government-sponsored financial fiascos argues against giving one more dime to the Obama Administration for a "jobs" program."
'nuff said.
If we had a working media, an honest media, they'd be on this so hard; showing what's going on and giving America the facts.
Almost a dead silence regarding any topic that indicates that our special leader is fallible.
Why can't we compete with China?
Because China is a slave state -- a virtual forced labor camp where workers are reportedly paid 31¢ an hour -- yes thirty-one CENTS an hour.
The other day I expressed a few thoughts in regard to the great advantages illegal aliens have returned to American Industry and to American consumers hoping to show the troubling issue of illegal immigration from a different perspective. No one appeared to "get it," so here it is again.
Illegal workers, who actually do the job willingly and unstintingly, have in truth restored a proper degree of honesty, competitiveness and economic viability to a jobs market maimed-and-all-but-destroyed by unionism and the crippling government regulations pressures from unionists and their fellow-travelers have visited on the Entrepreneur-Owner-Executive-Investor class.
The entrepreneurs and subsequent owners and investors conceived, created, built and developed the United States of America and made her the great world power she once was.
The illegal workers in truth are doing exactly what our own ancestors did when they flocked to these shores to avail themselves of the opportunity to support themselves by dint of their own efforts with hope of building a better future for themselves and their children.
The Illegal Workers embody the American Ideal -- as it was before the tenets of Marxian Progressivism insinuated themselves into the fabric of this nation, gradually became normalized and destroyed the underpinnings of The American Dream and the American Way of Life.
Radical? You bet. It's radical in exactly the way our Founders were radical.
"The Law" is one thing -- REALITY is another.
The reality we live with today is that American workers -- thanks to Unionism and Progressivism -- have priced themselves out of the market. They can't compete.
What SilverFiddle calls "Anarcho-Capitalism" -- i.e. the free, unfettered, unregulated, use of creative energy and determination to take full advantage of available opportunitie -- is the way this country got started, and the way it got built.
I have already said several times that Entrepreneurialism and Capitalism unrestrained by a Christian morality that regards The Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, and The Sermon on the Mount as the Supreme Authority is doomed to failure like every other system that disregards Divine Authority and depends solely on human invention. Nevertheless, the freedom to do one's darndest in pursuit of enlightened self-interest is the only reason we achieved what we did.
We started to go downhill -- literally to ROT from within -- the moment Marxian Progressivism emerged as a dominant force. Progressivism, you see, believes that EXTERNAL CONTROL of human interaction by government-generated FORCE is the best way to achieve "Heaven on Earth."
Sorry, but "Heaven" could never be reached by a forced march at gunpoint to a destination charted by Central Control and Command anymore than personal salvation could be achieved by "conversion" to "Christianity" by threat of torture and execution.
And in case anyone has read this far and is wondering, I am NOT suggesting we pay our work force 31¢ an hour. Only that we let the forces of free competition bring the price of labor -- and the cost to consumers -- and the subsequent cost of living -- down to realistic levels so that our money regains its purchasing power and thus its value.
As Mr. Reagan so eloquently said, "Government is not the solution. Government is the problem."
And as Mr. Jefferson said, "The government that governs best governs least."
~ FreeThinke
No-bid contracts . . . Whose idea was that?
Jack: Congress. It is part of the CFR, and has been used copiously by all parties.
http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=3ebde9891a3955444159130d8c8f7a4f&rgn=div6&view=text&node=48:1.0.1.2.6.3&idno=48
Here's an interesting news tidbit. Seems the Obama administration awarded a no-bid contract to Darth Vader's organization, the dreaded Death Star, Halliburton...
http://www.chron.com/business/article/KBR-gets-no-bid-contract-to-support-Army-in-Iraq-1702336.php
The real point is that energy from solar can not compete with fossil fuel energy, even if Chinese labor is free. The technology isn't there yet and it won't get there by presidential decree.
Bunkerville, our "special leader" is just Clintoon Redux.
Same right of center policies but with a lot less political ability. This guy thought he would just redo the Clintoon years without the upper end tax increase and all would be skittles and beer with the press playing the lapdog role and doing puff pieces about his iPod.
Turns out that we are in completely uncharted territory and it is a little naive for either side to claim they really have any more idea than a freaking box of hammers how to get out of this.
The tragedy is the right being so obstinate about tinkle down economics. The poverty rate and other reasonable measures are right back where they were when Saint Ronnie Raygun took over. Look at the progress we've made. Oh, your TV's are larger, I forgot.
conservativeonfire, you seem a little damp. The Chinese are selling plenty of panels and implementing the technology domestically.
Now historically when a technology is emerging you prime the pump, Government helps with the R&D and the great captains of industry reap the benefits.
Take a recent example, GPS, wouldn't exist without government funding.
So the technology is young. Let's stay out until China owns solar and the Danes and Germans own wind turbines. That's good conservative thinking.
Ducky, I agree with your statement that Republicans share the blame.
Why can't we compete? Is it because the Chinese are just better than us? Or, is it because of too many regulations and over taxation?
Wow FT looks like we may need to start from the ground up all over again.
Your statement...
"The reality we live with today is that American workers -- thanks to Unionism and Progressivism -- have priced themselves out of the market. They can't compete."
....says it all
Thank you, Lisa. I'm glad somebody "gets it."
The truth may be unpleasant to face, but dealing with reality -- as it is -- and not fantasy -- as we wish things could be or imagine they oughtto be -- is the only thing that could possibly save us.
After forty-odd years of working for a living I became a member of the despised "Investor Class." When the value of my shares goes up, I am able to live a little higher on the hog. When the value of my portfolio goes down, I have no choice but to tighten my belt, live with less, and hope the market recovers before I am plunged into poverty.
I could never understand why the work force cannot understand that, and accept PAY CUTS and REDUCED BENEFITS when times get tough.
Surely working for less is far better than not working at all?
But don't try telling that to a Unionist. Their heads have been filled with the cement of Marxian dialectics, which unfortunately renders them brain-dead.
The class warfare ploy is even more destructive to the best interests of the laborers than it is to the owners and shareholders who have risked money and taken a chance on the merit of their powers of judgment and creativity to make an idea come to life and become profitable.
Several mental midgets called in to C-Span this morning filled with hostility telling the world: "Them fat cats on Wall Street and them Bankers is holding onto billions of dollars that rightfully belongs to us. We is very disappointed that Barack hasn't made them put that money into the hands of "the people" where it rightfully belongs."
WIth a population conditioned to think that way what hope could there be that we will ever regain a sound economic footing?
All the laws in the world protecting the "rights" of this and that will be worth nothing once the Central Power eats up all the money as it destroys the engines that created all the wealth in the first place.
Industry makes.
Government takes.
It really is just as simple as that.
~ FreeThinke
" ... Congress. It is part of the CFR, and has been used copiously by all parties.
At LAST the light begins to dawn, and a glimmer of recognition emerges that we are, indeed, routinely exploited and victimized by a loosely organized cabal of internationalists who know no allegiance to this or any other country, but only to their pursuit of World Domination -- the abolition of individual nation states, unique cultural identities, the end also of religion save for the new-minted Progressive faith in One World United Under the Yoke of Socialistic Tyranny.
A FEW QUOTATIONS from NOTABLE INDIVIDUALS THAT EXPOSE the PROMOTION of a NEW WORLD ORDER
Woodrow Wilson on Secret Powers:
"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
Woodrow Wilson,The New Freedom (1913)
"Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government.
We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government... a bureaucratic elite."
- Senator William Jenner, 1954
As you should be able to see the groundwork for this takeover was laid a very long time ago. We have labored under its thrall all our lives.
~ FreeThinke
"CHINA OWNS THIS INDUSTRY AND IS CLEANING OUR CLOCK.
We can't compete"
One word, terifs. But Obama would dare.
Tariffs? China isn't importing the panels here.
They are installing them domestically and exporting to Europe.
We aren't even in the loop.
TERIFS?
Did you mean TARIFFS, perhaps?
Funny! I just looked that up and discovered it came to us from Arabic through the old form of Italian.
I think it was TARIF in Arabic, then TARIFFA in Old Italian.
The first known use in the west was 1592 -- a hundred years after Columbus.
Anyway, what do tariffs accomplish other than put money into the hands of the government while raising prices for consumers?
What good is that? It's like increasing the sales tax -- or creating one where none existed before.
Smoke and Mirrors! Legerdemain! Hocus Pocus! Stuff and Nonsense!
Anyway you slice it, the consumer (that's you and me) gets SCREWED.
The best interests of LABOR run counter to your OWN.
The purpose of labor is to SERVE not to MASTER.
~ FreeThinke
TIME for THE SAVAGE NATON!
Buh bye!
~ FT
Nice pwning Ducky! You'd better stop making sense and calling out the lies or you'll get banned.
––––––– To Ducky and Bd –––––––
I wonder how your act would fare
Presented in Tienanman Square?
~ FT
>implementing the technology domestically
Just like their new bullet train!
>Nice pwning Ducky!
Delusional much?
"The way you build infrastructure is at the local and state level,"
Riiiiiiiiiight...
That's how we built the railroads, fought the great wars, ended the horrible epidemics, civilized the land....
Riiiiiiiiiight...
That's just stupid.
"Accountability at the local level."
What a stupid lie.
The more local the accountability, the less accountable - just as the less local the accountability, the less accountable.
It's about balance.
Not crazy, stupid ideology.
Please man, get with the program of higher thought required for today's world. 18th century ideologogical dogma has a lot but only so much value these days.
JMJ
SF: Mr. Z's business had him involved in enormous bidding processes and he often reminded people who slammed the Halliburton contracts in the Middle East that bids that huge can take years. Years preparing the particulars of the big, a year or two bidding, even a long time just selecting who's going to bid. We hadn't the time for that with Iraq and we went in......with Halliburton, which had "boots on the ground," so to speak.
That Cheney had been involved with Halliburton's still a hackneyed cheap shot.
Ducky, Bd's thrilled with you! You must be SO proud :)
>crazy, stupid ideology
Provided by Jersey on a daily basis, in shrieking, semi-coherent form.
And the Railroads were build by whom?
And just in...
Bob Turner won Weiner's seat 53-47in a district that is 3:1 Democrat.
Cha Cha Cha!
Well z, Ducky is always appreciative of his fans.
I spend a lot of time in bad neighborhoods.
Why just look at Professor Strawman, he brings up bullet trains when we're talking about solar panels. It's a tough room. You play your best but it's filled with hookers and drunks.
YEP! Here it is from the WaPo no less. HOT DAMN!
Republican Wins Democratic New York House Seat
By Paul Kane, Wednesday, September 14, 12:22 AM
With his outcome of his own reelection effort 14 difficult months away, President Obama suffered a sharp rebuke at the polls Tuesday, when voters in New York elected a conservative Republican to represent a Democratic congressional district that has not been in Republican hands since the 1920s.
Bob Turner, the winner, cast the election as a referendum on Obama’s stewardship of the economy and, in the state’s 9th Congressional District, which has a large population of Orthodox Jewish voters, the president’s position on Israel.
Turner, 70, a retired cable television executive who has never served in elective office, defeated Democratic State Assemblyman David Weprin, 55, who has two decades of public service experience, to fill the seat left vacant when Anthony Weiner (D) resigned in disgrace in June after more than 12 years in the House. ...
Drudge is billing this as "The Revenge of the Jews." Can't think why. Don't they vote about 80% for Democrats? And isn't Weiner one of them?
Anyway, this is Little ANTHONY WEINER'S GIFT to the CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT.
Proving Will Shakespeare right once again. Sweet Are the Uses of Perversity
Ooooh Hoo Hooooooooo!!! The irony! The GORGEOUS, LUSCIOUS irony of it all!
Needless to say it's far too early for us to be dancing in the streets. We still don't have a candidate good enough to put Obama under the [political] sod once and for all where he belongs.
It looks like Romney will be the nominee by default.
NOT GOOD!
~ FreeThinke
Ducky, with the situation with Solyndra, I wouldn't be talking solar panels long about now if I were you.
THE REPUBLICANS WON WEINER'S SEAT (so to speak!) HURRRRAAAAH!
Little Anthony really pulled a boner, didn't he?
HELP! I can't stop laughing. The tears are rolling down my cheeks.
My rib cage is about to crack. My sides are splitting. My gut's going to be sore for a week.
Oh SHIT! I haven't had so much fun since Grandmaw died!!!
Ducky and Bd are looking more like Laurel & Hardy every day. Their routine is THAT stale.
WOOO! HOOO! HOOOO!!!! I'm a CHOO CHOO TRAIN!
Nurse! QUICK! Get me my lithium. HURRY!
~ FT
Bunkerville said: Almost a dead silence regarding any topic that indicates that our special leader is fallible.
Were a Republican POTUS in office and something similar to Solyndra were going on the year before and election, the news of the scandal would be on the front page every day, as well as the lead story on every news broadcast.
Z: Ducky, Bd's thrilled with you! You must be SO proud :)
LOL!
Jersey: Road and bridge projects are done at the local level, overseen by city, county and state governments.
My larger economic point went over your head: Yeah, Obama can borrow another half a trillion from China and put illegal aliens to work, but it will be Solyndra X100.
You want to restart the economy? Create a good jobs climate. Yes, we need regulation, but this administration in particular has gone way overboard.
But maybe we should do it like the old Soviet Union? Is that what you're saying?
>Why just look at Professor Strawman,
That's rich, coming from Little Miss Non Sequitur.
>he brings up bullet trains when we're talking about solar panels.
Oh fun, I get to do some remedial teaching again.
As anyone following events in East Asia knows, China's bad attempt to copy Japan's bullet train has been a rather spectacular failure (as has the rest of their rail system, etc., that has been so highly touted by the Fop in Chief).
Domestic implementation of "going green" (whether solar panels or all those windmills that sit motionless and meaningless) in China, also so highly touted by the Fop and his little ones, has also been a dismal failure.
The reference to China's bullet train was a commentary by comparison on the state of solar panel use and the "going green" industry in China in general.
I'm sorry that you weren't up on current events enough or quick enough to pick up on the connection. I'll try to simplify things for you in the future, although I think I've dumbed things down about as much as they can be. At a certain point, I'll just have to abandon you to your dimness.
WINDPOWER: Fuel of the Future?
Beans, beans
The musical fruit
The more you eat
The more you toot.
Beans make wind,
So, direct the flow,
And you'll move faster
Wherever you go.
Beans help foster solitude
You'll soon be alone
After eating this food.
I knew a girl,
A terrible flirt,
The beans she ate
Tore a hole in her skirt.
Night time beans
Filled him with dread,
Because often the sheets
Blew right off his bed.
Beans beans!
Good for your heart
Eat more not less
For a roaring good start.
Back from Progress
You'll not be held.
Instead, your life will be
JET-PROPELLED!
~ FT
Hmmm, looks like the House isn't going to let go of this one.
President Bobo may have jumped the gun.
I have to man up on this one, Silverfiddle, it appears that Obummer was either stupid or very naughty on this one. Or both.
I concede your point.
You're a good man, Ducky, and you're smart enough to know when to jump off the train.
Ducky's a GUY?!
I guess I owe him an apology, then. Ducky, I'm sorry for repeatedly referring to you as a gal.
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