Green’s running in the red
By The Trentonian Staff, www.trentonian.com 5 September 2011
Green’s running in the red.
And this is so even though very smart people like President Barack Obama, Massahusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell all bet heavily on green.
You may ask: How smart can these guys be if they bet heavily on green and it’s running in the red?
Fair question.
Answer: Smart enough not to bet with their own money.
They bet with YOUR money.
Take Solyndra Inc., a solar energy outfit in Fremont, Cal.
President Obama was so impressed with Solyndra’s prospects that during a visit to its plant he dug right into his pocket – uh, make that into YOUR pocket – and peeled off $535 million in loans and grants.
The money came out of the “stimulus” pot.
You remember it, right? The spending cornucopia that was going to keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent and then start lowering it?
Now Solyndra has gone into bankruptcy and added to rather than subtracted from unemployment, with 1,100 layoffs.
Obama bet (with your money) on the bankruptcy-bound green firm despite PricewaterhouseCooper’s observation that it had lost money five years in a row, casting doubt on its “ability to continue on as a going concern.”
Investor’s Business Daily says the Solyndra case “underscores the dangers of an energy policy driven by ideology.”
We’d add that it may also underscore the danger of very smart people in the government whose actual knowledge, despite pretensions to the contrary, falls somewhat hhshort of omniscience.
It could be, however, that the Obama administration’s Solyndra bet was the result of neither ideology nor know-it-all hubris.
One of the firm’s biggest investors was an Obama campaign fundraiser. So maybe this was simply just another case of politics as usual.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Gov. Patrick dug into Bay State taxpayers’ pockets and bet $58 million on Evergreen Solar. It too has now gone the way of bankruptcy.
Its contribution to the economy: 800 layoffs.
Add SpectaWatt in New York State to the list of green outfits that have gone belly up, despite the advantage of having the Washington policy commissars in their corner. (The Dept. of Energy reports that the average subsidy for all forms of energy is $1.65 per megawatt hour and for wind and solar $24!)
Elsewhere on the alternative energy front, Ed Rendell, when he was still Pennsylvania’s governor, reached into Keystone State taxpayers’ pockets and bet big on Bionol Clearfield, a corn-to-ethanol enterprise. Rendell rustled up $67 million in tax-free bonds and $27 in grants and loans. Now Bionol Clearfield’s in bankruptcy and on the auction block.
Speaking of betting big, Spain’s socialist government – in a policy initiative Obama hailed – was one of the first gamblers to go all-in on wind turbines, solar panels and such.
The country now teeters on the edge of default, with unemployment continuing to top… 20 percent.
Is Obama now going to insist on doubling down?
May we suggest as a more promising alternative the blackjack tables in A.C.?
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/09/05/greens-running-in-the-red/