Taxpayers getting sunburned again
By Mark Landsbaum
The Orange County Register
Published: Jan. 20, 2012 Updated: Jan. 23, 2012 9:14 a.m.
How many Solyndras is too many?
America was shocked to find President Barack Obama's prize example of a subsidized alternative-energy company laying off its 1,100 employees. Then America was staggered that the Bay Area company went bankrupt last summer, despite being propped up with half a billion taxpayer dollars.
The shocks kept coming as we learned this solar panel-making scheme not only got special treatment other companies didn't, it got a government go-ahead despite a host of red flags raised early about its financial riskiness. As if not disillusioned enough, voters and taxpayers were told the FBI raided the company, and Congress was investigating. Then there was that inconvenient fact that Solyndra's looming disaster was foreseen before the 2010 midterm elections, but government higher-ups kept it quiet until after the ballots were cast.
By the time it became widely known that Obama campaign donors had invested heavily in Solyndra, people probably weren't too surprised to learn that, in bankruptcy, the same investors were allowed to go to the front of the line to get money back, ahead of those to whom Solyndra actually owed money, quite unlike most normal bankruptcies.
Who knew such things could happen in America, the land of free enterprise founded by small government advocates who didn't want Washington meddling in their affairs, let alone forcibly extracting unnecessary taxes from them to hand out to freeloaders and cronies?
Amid it all, the Obama administration insisted nothing was amiss. Indeed, the Solyndra debacle was just a good idea that hadn't worked out. So they said.
"This was a merit-based decision made by expert staffers at the Department of Energy," insisted White House spokesman Eric Schultz.
If we give them the benefit of the doubt, the most charitable conclusion must be that the Department of Energy really stinks at determining what's meritorious.
But wait, as they say in late-night television. That's not all.
CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson reported a week ago that there are 11 more Solyndra-type clean-energy companies having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk-bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES' subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra. According to CBS News, Beacon Power, a "green-energy storage company," received $43 million from the government despite its Standard and Poor's debt rating of "CCC-plus." ...
Remainder of article @ http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/government-336638-energy-company.html
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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