The Solyndra Slip - Kaiser Admits His Greed

Well, things are certainly beginning to heat up in the "green energy" sector of our economy.

If you've been keeping track of this glorious experiment in command and control economics, certainly you're aware of the story of Solyndra, the solar-panel manufacturer that recently became financially insolvent after squandering over $500 Billion of your tax dollars. Now that there is a Congressional investigation, the facts behind this debacle are emerging at a furious pace, and none of them look very good for the Obama administration.

What we have here is a failure to understand how our free market is supposed to work, among other things, like political corruption in the White House, crony capitalism, favoritism, and a whole bunch of other things that the government shouldn't be doing.

Again.

In case you didn't already know, this administration, through the failed Stimulus Act, has funnelled billions of your tax dollars into companies that wouldn't normally have received startup capital through traditional means, namely presenting a viable business plan to investors. They're lining up at the door to the White House for a handout from Uncle Sam.

What has occurred in reality is that an awful lot of your money has gone to Obama's political cronies and money bundlers. What it adds up to is theft. Hope and Change indeed.

Without going too deeply into the sordid details, the government has decided that it will attempt to create a whole new sector of our economy. The only problem with that is, this sector has existed for over a generation and has yet to prove itself in the free market.

Normally, any sector must be able to sustain itself by generating wealth. The fact that this isn't happening in the green energy sector hasn't stopped many well-intentioned people in Washington from pumping money into it. The problem is that it isn't their money, it's yours, and mine. Funny, but I don't remember telling anyone I voted for to do this. How about you?

Ever since this whole "mankind is killing the earth" hoax began, a few brave souls have tried, with the best of intentions, to make some money from it. Nothing wrong with that, but ask yourself if, after more than thirty years of failure, it deserves to be propped up with your money instead of doing what other businesses do, namely, sustain themselves or go out of business, all on their own, without government subsidies. All the time.

It's a good thing that there are folks in Washington who now want to take a closer look at the distorted way this sector is being funded. To my knowledge, there is no other segment of the economy that "works" the way green energy works. What we're discovering, as the curtain gets pulled back on the process, is the Chicago Way of Corrupt Politics, transplanted to Washington by the current inhabitant of the White House.

There's only one thing to remember in all of this: if these "green energy" companies had a really good idea, it would have already worked in the free market. The simple fact that these companies depend upon government subsidies to start up and operate is evidence that they aren't viable.

It's along about this time that bring in somebody named Bill Clinton to share with us his expert economic analysis of the burgeoning green energy sector.

"This has to work economically," he said. "You have to come up with the money on the front end."

Um, Bill, that's not how it works, not out here in the real world, anyway. If it was a good idea, it wouldn't need tax monies. It would create its own.

Just so you know there, Bill.

I ran across this little video of one of Solyndra's principles, George Kaiser, openly boasting of his goal to secure as much of our money as possible from the Stimulus. (h/t Weasel Zippers and Ace)



Verun Serum, who posted this story initially, has this to say:

Frankly I can think of no better condemnation of the corruption and utter futility of the Obama stimulus then the fact that here you have one of the wealthiest philanthropists in America, a man with nearly $10 billion in personal assets, openly stating his intention to grab as much stimulus money as he possibly could, like every other pig at the trough. Is this the proper role of government, to take hard-earned dollars from tax payers (and their children and grandchildren) to fund the vanity projects of multi-billionaires, well-intentioned or not, who just so happen to have the right political connections? The $500 million to Solyndra is only the tip of the iceberg, I’d bet. How many other stimulus deals were greased by Kaiser and others like him?

I’m not the first to notice, but Obama is a bit of a fraud. Not exactly sure how he reconciles his tax the rich rhetoric with his Administration’s track record of deals like this. If you really believe the rich aren’t paying their fair share you might start by not forking over taxpayer dollars to your billionaire donors.

It gets better, much better. NRO points out this little nugget of legal information -

While Solyndra’s failure is an embarrassment for both parties, Kaiser’s foundation still stands to recoup a large chunk of its investment in the company, whereas taxpayers will recoup very little, if any, of the $535 million investment the White House made on our behalf. That’s because once Solyndra’s financial troubles became too obvious to ignore, the DOE negotiated a loan restructuring that gave priority status to private investors over taxpayers with respect to the first $75 million recovered in the event of Solyndra’s collapse. As Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations pointed out last week, this appears to be a blatant violation of federal law.

Toilet, meet my money. Money, toilet.