Many here scream about the situation involving Solyndra and on some principle they would be right to do so but is it really principle on which they stand? NO! I think the vast majority of the "NOISE" found here is not about principle but rather just another excuse to bash Obama by people who I'd question if Obama were republican would even utter a peep in opposition?
But the larger question IMO would be if Solyndra was a first or was it rather a link in a long line of gov't interventions using taxpayer funds and the only reason this thing went viral if you will is because the company itself failed? Did Solyndra come about because a precedent had long been set and thus a business model created not for the purpose to create a good solar product but to skim the creme off the top from gov't loans and then if the idea didn't sustain, the taxpayer if you will is left on the hook holding a worthless carcass and some Solyndra players padded the back account.
The precedent was set back in the era of FDR and the
Rural Electrification Act and the creation of an
overseeing administration even still with us to this day. If you think Solyndra is new or that solar power subsidization is something completely new, then you should re-examine the reason you have electric power and telephone in your home to begin with. And if you think Solyndra was the first "Jobs" program to come along, thanks to the
Dept. of USDA (read page 4 for starters) in which the old REA has been folded into, you'd best again re-think that electrical socket you have on the wall that powers the computer screen you are now looking at or in some cases, the phone line in which you get your internet service. Good example of economic intervention, central planning, nationalization as well as socialization.
And don't overlook the Dept. of Energy although
this report is produced by a State of Texas source, it does discuss again the level of federal subsidization of energy by the federal gov't. And do you have the guts or honesty to search the real true cost of a gallon of gasoline and to who actually pays the price of the difference? Or is all you want to do is poor mouth on behalf of the oil companies about how little profit they get from a gallon of gasoline? If they had to pay for the entire true cost of that gallon of gas, they'd make no profit at all and we'd be using something else as a means of conveyance and my guess is it would be a variety of things as well.
You are right to criticize Solyndra and as a huge advocate of not only solar and wind but also micro-hydro and on small and local scale too, I absolutely oppose any and all gov't subsidization even in light that these forms of energy generation are competing against energy forms that are heavily subsidized and are only market viable because of the socialization of their business models. At the same time I also support the de-centralization of the national energy grid which would drive energy generation down to the local and even individual level and minus the gov't picking winners and losers in the area of energy, the use of sustainable energy generation would expand naturally and at an ever decreasing cost as the technology improves and broadens. Solar and Wind do not and the technology at present sez it won't work in large scale grids because of the excess power generation required to move energy across the grid, energy that is never used at the end user but just used to pressurize the line if you will to move the power. Solar and Wind however at the local and micro level work great and minus the taxpayer subsidy even in current models would be/is very cost effective and in some cases even cheaper than grid power..
IMO Solyndra was not and never was about benefiting and expanding solar generation but rather checking it at the door in order to protect longer established energy monopolies. It also appears in such schemes that
some very familiar faces and names also benefit greatly but I know the narrative works much better in the created drama of Red Team verses Blue Team and many are more than happy to engage in that mindless process but if one is willing to delve deeper down and peel the layers back, one finds statism and corporatism clearly hand in hand and it's been so for a very long, long time.
From the linked article itself:
The government support — which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates — largely eliminated the risk to the private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits for years to come. The beneficiaries include financial firms like
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG — even Google.
A great deal of attention has been
focused on Solyndra, a start-up that received $528 million in federal loans to develop cutting-edge solar technology before it went bankrupt, but nearly 90 percent of the $16 billion in clean-energy loans guaranteed by the federal government since 2009 went to subsidize these lower-risk power plants, which in many cases were backed by big companies with vast resources.
And now initially we had a few folks start raising a stink about Wall Street and how aspects of Corp. America and Wall Street currently occupy
"the public commons" but when some average folk, maybe lacking full understanding or not the best as a spokesperson, decide themselves to occupy a public commons their tax dollars (save your mindess chatter Moreluck because everyone does pay taxes) were used to buy, we need a new narrative to make it easy to demonize and to keep honest folk from drilling down into the facts where they just might find the guiltiest MFers who hide behind free market rhetoric but are the biggest socialist and communist of them all!
