RINO Alert

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For those Republicans out there that fear the party has been taken over by extremist elements led, in large part, by the tea party, can turn their lonely eyes to Brian Bilbray (R-San Diego) who is more than willing to throw your money away down the crap hole of green energy subsidies.

Rep. Brian Bilbray is winning praise from the solar industry for casting the sole Republican vote this week against efforts to dismantle the federal loan guarantee program for clean energy linked to the Solyndra debacle.

In the run-up to fall elections, many Republicans in Congress have embraced the "No More Solyndras Act," which would go beyond implementing safeguards to improve loan guarantees and dismantle the program altogether.

California-based solar panel manufacturer Solyndra received a half-billion dollar federal loan guarantee before filing for bankruptcy protection last year.

Bilbray participated in vote on a rough draft of the new legislation by the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power. The measure moved ahead 14-6 toward a possible House vote.

The Solar Energy Industry Association expressed its appreciation on Friday in a news release.

"It takes true vision and courage to ignore politics and take a principled, fact-based stand in support of renewable energy," said Rhone Resch, president of the umbrella trade group for solar manufacturing, distribution, research and financing.

Yes. What passes for vision and courage in D.C. is committing $537 billion dollars of tax-payer money on technology that isn't market-ready and which is owned, in part, by a presidential bundler. That Bilbray is some sort of maverick, or something.



So, who does the congressman think is to blame for the Solyndra fiasco?

Reached by phone, the congressman blamed "mid-management" at the Department of Energy for mishandling clean energy loan guarantees and asserted that his colleagues in the House were "blaming the vehicle" instead of the driver.

"The program is being thrown under the bus because people don't want to admit that it was administered horrendously," Rep. Bilbray said. "The program should be able to do great things if it's administered properly."

This is a prime example of willful ignorance. The decision to award Solyndra this money was made at the White House/cabinet level. Independent and Treasury Department auditors, pleaded with the Department of Energy and the White House not to make this loan - they rightly saw it as a bad bet - but ultimately, their pleading was to no avail.

And guess what? We will blame the driver and the vehicle. Yes, it was administered poorly and yes, it is a fatally-flawed concept. If Solyndra's ability to manufacture solar panels was a viable business plan then what do they need of tax-payer money?

As the Department of Energy's green energy loan program body count continues to mount (Solyndra, Abound Solar, Beacon Power, Ener1, Evergreen Solar, Range Fuels, Raser Technologies, Spectrawatt, Thompson River Power LLC; a partial list of companies that participated in the DOE loan program and which have all filed for bankruptcy), we are waiting to hear of one of its success stories and which will then beg the question if they could've succeeded without tax-payer assistance.

More great moments in the history of crony capitalism

The San Diego Tribune really wants us to get over the Solyndra scandal


Solyndra Aside, State Leads U.S. in Solar Jobs Tally*

California has the most solar industry jobs of any state by far — 25,575 — but was ranked sixth in per-capita employment, according to a survey by The Solar Foundation, a nonprofit education and research organization.

The study, published Monday, runs counter to the gloomy picture conjured by the demise of Northern California solar manufacturer Solyndra and the uproar over a half-billion dollar federal loan guarantee to the company.

Yeah, we probably should just get over this half-billion dollar adventure in cronyism as it's just one example that doesn't prove the entire green sector is rife with corruption, especially when there is another one brewing that makes Solyndra look like child's play.

How did a failing California solar company, buffeted by short sellers and shareholder lawsuits, receive a $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee for a photovoltaic electricity ranch project—three weeks after it announced it was building new manufacturing plant in Mexicali, Mexico, to build the panels for the project.

The company, SunPower (SPWR-NASDAQ), now carries $820 million in debt, an amount $20 million greater than its market capitalization. If SunPower was a bank, the feds would shut it down. Instead, it received a lifeline twice the size of the money sent down the Solyndra drain.

Two men with insight into the process are SunPower rooter Rep. George R. Miller III, (D.-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee and the co-chairman of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, and his SunPower lobbyist son, George Miller IV.

That $1.2 billion dollar loan is for the construction of a solar farm in the San Luis Obispo County that will create 350 construction jobs over two years and 15 permanent jobs. 15.... for $1.2 billion.

Go to the link and check out the political conections and the interesting timing of some of the events surrounding the loan approval and you'll understand how SunPower may just be the latest green jobs boondoggle to blow up in the administration's face.



* We went with the title the U-T used in their print edition today.

California's own Great Leap Forward?

Beware renewable energy sprawl.

In order for California to meet its mandated goal of generating one-third of its electricity from renewable resources, predominately wind turbines and solar panels, quite a bit of land and natural resources are going to be required in order to achieve that.

California's peak usage is 52,000 megawatts, so one-third of that is 17,000 MW. Let's assume for the sake of simplicity that wind and solar will split production of that 17,000 MW 50/50.

On the solar side, producing 8,500 MW of electricity will require 129 square miles of solar farms, an area more than five times as large as Manhattan. Good thing we've got such a big state, huh? We can park these farms out in the middle of nowhere (which is another problem in of itself which we will address later). Unfortunately, nowhere, like the Ivanpah farm out in the Eastern Mojave had its construction shut down out of concern for the federally-protected desert tortoise.


Wind energy is even worse: in order to produce that 8,500 MW, you would need the equivalent of 70 Manhattans, again, out in the middle of nowhere with the incumbent transmission (loss) problems. Also, wind turbines require about 200 tons of steel each, the production of which has its own sizeable carbon footprint. Contrast that with a natural gas turbine which weighs about 9 tons and there is a 200-1 difference in the the MW generated per ton of steel between the gas turbine and the wind turbine.

And all this time, we thought the green mantra was: Small is beautiful.


Then again, this may all prove to be a moot point since China sits on most of the rare earths required for wind and solar technology and we're supposed to run out of lithium by 2050 anyway.





When thinking of our head-long rush into green energy, we are reminded of China's Great Leap Forward and their head-long rush to become an industrial power. Starting in 1958, 90 million rural peasants were submitted to "backyard steel mills" but with no iron ore or pig iron to throw into their crude smelts, they instead grabbed anything they could; shovels, hoes, picks, axes, pipes, crow bars, wagon hubs and even their own small tractors... any and all iron on the farm. After all, their were mandates and quotas to be met! Suffice to say, the steel produced was virtually useless. And besides worthless steel, what did the central planners of the Chinese communist party have to show for it? Depending upon who you are listening to, between 20 and 30 million dead Chinese.

We're in the best of hands.

It even kind of looks like TOTUS...

... so what the heck are they waiting for?

The Obama administration has nixed the idea of reinstalling solar panels on the White House roof.

Some 32 solar panels were first installed on the executive mansion's roof by then President Jimmy Carter as part of his efforts to tout clean, renewable energy during the 1970s, when the U.S. faced severe shortages and price spikes after an oil embargo by Arab countries. Carter held a rooftop news conference in 1979 to show off the panels and discourage reliance on foreign oil.

The panels were yanked off after Ronald Reagan took office a year later, but they didn't disappear. Instead, some of them have been stored for the past 30 years by environmentalists at Unity College in Maine, where they were used to heat water in the school's cafeteria. Last week, a group of students loaded one of the vintage 6-by-3-foot panels into a biodiesel van headed for Washington.

The group was led by Bill McKibben, founder of the environmental group 350.org, who described the mission on his blog: "If the president can't climb up on the roof and hammer in some solar panels, clearly we need to push him up."

The technology used in the Carter-era solar panels is now outdated, but a California company called Sungevity offered to outfit the White House with new panels for free. More than 8,000 people have signed on to a Facebook group in support. McKibben appeared on David Letterman's "Late Show" last week to plug the effort as well.

What does it say about an administration that they, after constantly lecturing the rest of us country classers on the noble and moral merits of green power, wouldn't follow through on this easy button-type of substantively meaningless yet highly symbolic gesture?

The article indicates that some inside the administration are skittish about doing so because it may lead to Carter comparisons. That horse has left the barn, folks - and the fact that it's solar panels, for crying out loud, providing the Carter-Obama nexus which has the regime spooked amuses us to no end.

Is "Government investment" a paradox?

"Felony dumb"

That from Brian Bilbray (R-CA) on the Department of Energy's decision to give Solyndra over a half billion in tax dollar money to...

- invest in the production of the risky and not-yet-ready-for-primetime thin film technology solar panels instead of the less efficient but far-cheaper polycrystalline panels that the Chinese produce exclusively.

- manufacture solar panels in the onerous regulatory regime of California where electricity rates are twice that of Midwestern states like Ohio.

- manufacture solar panels on one of the most expensive pieces of land in the country.

- manufacture solar panels in a completely unnecessary new building when there were plenty of existing Bay Area facilities that could've been retro-fitted or rented.

Add all this up and it doesn't seem like a business plan that would attract a whole lot of private investment dollars and this also helps explain how it is that the government funded it.

There are essentially 4 ways how money is spent and they are as follows (in descending order of efficiency: 1) you spend your own money on yourself 2) you spend your own money on someone else 3) you spend someone else's money on yourself and 4) you spend someone else's money on someone else.


Take a wild guess as to which number best describes how government spends money? If you chose #4, move yourself to the head of the class.


There was simply no incentive for the government to get a quality product at the lowest possible price (#1) and this helps explain the inherent inefficiencies with government subsidies. And when the government has no real skin in the game, they invariably leave themselves open to other incentives such as graft and political favortism which very well may be the case with Solyndra...

... not that Solyndra's big wigs are going to let on to any of that.


Please remember this the next time you hear a pol prattle on about "government investments"... it simply does not work by the same rules, criteria and desired outcomes that our own personal investments do.

Crony capitalism by the numbers

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Entrance question: Just how incompetent do they have to be that they cannot even make crony capitalism work?



Marc A. Thiessen in writing for the Washington Post helpfully explains that if Mitt Romney's private equity record is fair game then so should be Obama's public equity record. Through either the stimulus bill or the Department of Energy's loan program, the administration has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses. And how's that been working out?

By the numbers...

33 million: The amount of money given to Raser Technologies to build a power plant in Utah. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012 and owes $1.5 million in back taxes.


126 million: The amount of tax-payer dollars given to ECOtality for the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers. ECOtality’s own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, “We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future.”


98.5 million: The size of a loan guarantee to Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP) in 2010. The New York Times reported last October that the company is in “financial turmoil” and that “[a]fter a series of technical missteps that are draining Nevada Geothermal’s cash reserves, its own auditor concluded in a filing released last week that there was ‘significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.’ ”


3 billion (yes, that's billion with a "b"): the amount of tax-payer dollars given to First Solar in the form of a loan guarantee for power plants in Arizona and California. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report last week, the company “fell to a record low in Nasdaq Stock Market trading May 4 after reporting $401 million in restructuring costs tied to firing 30 percent of its workforce.”


400 million: the amount of a loan guarantee given to Abound Solar, Inc. to build solar panel factories. Currently, the company has halted production and laid off 180 employees.



43 million: the size of the loan guarantee given to green-energy storage company Beacon Power. According to CBS News, at the time of the loan, “Standard and Poor’s had confidentially given the project a dismal outlook of ‘CCC-plus.’ ” In the fall of 2011, Beacon received a delisting notice from Nasdaq and filed for bankruptcy.

From linked article:

This is just the tip of the iceberg. A company called SunPower got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, and as of January, the company owed more than it was worth. Brightsource got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee and posted a string of net losses totaling $177 million. And, of course, let’s not forget Solyndra — the solar panel manufacturer that received $535 million in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees and went bankrupt, leaving taxpayers on the hook.

And our favorite numbers from this article:

71: the percentage of DOE grants and loans that went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.” This according to Peter Schweizer's book, "Throw Them All Out".

100: the number of criminal investigations that have been launched by the DOE's inspector general related to the department's green-energy program.




Here's some more on private equity firms from Democrat Lanny Davis:

Private equity firms often invest in distressed companies by putting in cash and cutting expenses in order to save a company that is already close to bankruptcy. Sometimes the investment works and the company and jobs are saved. And sometimes, to save the company, jobs need to be cut or wages and benefits reduced.

Does that sound familiar? It should. It’s called the General Motors bailout, widely touted by President Obama and Democrats as a success story, which it was.

Except that it wasn't. GM stock is currently trading at $22/share, down from the $33/share at its IPO. And that price will have to get up to $50/share in order to break even on the bailout. As it stands right now, we have lost billions to General Motors and we, most likely, will never get it back.




And one last thing regarding public equity and Obama's miserable track record regarding the same, next time you hear a Team O water carrier or someone from the administration itself pop-off about the people Romney laid off, remember this:

The Treasury Department encouraged automakers seeking TARP funds to rapidly close their dealerships, even though the plan contributed no specific savings to the companies and caused job losses at a time of mounting unemployment, according to a scathing new audit published Monday.

The report focuses on the plans by Chrysler LLC and General Motors Corp. to rapidly reduce their number of dealerships by about 25 percent each, and the role that Treasury played in encouraging the automakers to do so quickly instead of over the course of five years.

The audit was prepared by Neil Barofsky, a former federal prosecutor who now serves as special inspector general for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Chrysler eliminated 789 dealerships in June 2009, and GM plans to wind down 1,454 dealerships by October of this year. The rationale behind those moves was that the old dealership network was too big, and that by closing some of the dealerships, the remaining ones would be more profitable and better positioned to re-invest in their businesses.

Wow. Kind of sounds like something Bain would've done.

Heh.


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Great moments in the history of the DOE's green loan program

Via Hot Air

We dumped over a half billion dollars into Solyndra only to see that company go bankrupt in 2011 taking 1,100 jobs with it. So, you are probably asking yourself, "Well, what about the assets that got left behind? What about the machinery, the tools and whatever solar panels they produced."


Fear not, o intrepid tax-payer as it seems that 1,368 glass tubes that were to be components of Solyndra's tubular solar panels found their way to a UC Berkely interpretive art exhibit where they transmit light and cool air into a darkened chamber.


From PJ Media:

“SOL Grotto”, by Ronald Rael & Virginia San Fratello, was a delightful meditation on perception. Situated above Strawberry Creek, the dark wooden bunker is pierced with hundreds of glass pipes cozened from local ex-company Solyndra. Tiny snippets of the world outside can be discerned through the tubes, making one feel like they’re inside the compound eye of an insect.

For those of you in Placentia, California, SOL is a euphemism amongst the hep cats out there for "S#%t Out of Luck".



So, what happened to the other 24 million unused Solyndra solar tubes? In a word, they were destroyed. Follow the link for a local CBS News report on how workers were simply throwing these tubes into dumpsters when Solyndra shut down operations.


As sad as it is, we can think of no better metaphor than the DOE's failed and corrupt loan program than dumpster after countless dumpster filled with shattered glass and a few of the solar tubes that were spared this fate to be featured in a hippie quiet room.

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More great moments in the history of crony capitalism... cont.

As even more and more legacy media outlets are digging into the Solyndra scandal it becomes more and more evident why the White House is blowing off Congressional subpoena request deadlines.





From the WaPo:

At a number of points in its troubled history, the solar company Solyndra faced dire financial problems that threatened its survival. Yet at each crisis, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and officials at his agency failed to take steps that critics say could have limited taxpayer losses when the company collapsed last summer.

Instead, Energy Department officials monitoring the solar panel manufacturer and its $535 million federal loan stepped in with financial assistance, or worked to dispel concerns raised by industry analysts and other Obama administration staffers, according to previously confidential documents analyzed by The Washington Post.

The officials raised no public red flags even as Solyndra executives presented a glowing picture last summer to Capitol Hill lawmakers, describing a growing company when internal sales figures suggested one that was in serious trouble.

The newly obtained documents, along with other records obtained in recent weeks, offer the clearest picture yet of Solyndra’s deteriorating finances and the Energy Department’s extraordinary efforts to prop up the company. Chu, who is scheduled to testify next week before a House investigating subcommittee, is likely to be questioned about his agency’s willingness to invest millions more taxpayer dollars in the firm, even after the White House had abandoned hopes of a rescue.

Everybody including the Treasury Department, OMB and independant auditors knew that Solyndra was a dog but Chu, the Energy Department and, of course, the White House forged ahead with their continuing support of their fair-headed green power child.

With Solyndra technically in default this past December for failing to make a $5 million reserve fund payment as a taxpayer protection, the Energy Department could have shut down the entire operation. However, instead of doing so, DOE officials wrangled $75 million dollars out of private investors with the stipulation that placed their new investment ahead of taxpayers for repayment in the event of a bankruptcy.

If this sounds familiar it should as in the Chrysler and General Motors bankruptcy cram-down proceedings, secured creditors were told to take a back seat to union concerns.



To recap: Against the better judgement of everyone outside the White House and DOE, a $535 million loan at near-zero interest rates (which were lower than similar DOE loans) was dumped into a solar company, linked to Obama fundraiser/bundler George Kaiser, that produced not-yet-ready-for-market-time solar panels and which ultimately went belly up. If that isn't crony capitalism carried out to a "t" then we don't know what is?

Great moments in the history of crony capitalism (UPDATED)

please scroll down for update...



Entrance observation: Over $500 million in loan gurantees at near-zero interest rates and they still couldn't make it work tells you pretty much all you need to know about the current competitiveness of green technology.

A politically connected solar company that pocketed a half billion dollar government loan, only to shut its doors, fire workers and file for bankruptcy, benefited from a series of breaks in securing the federal funds -- including an interest rate lower than other green energy projects, iWatch News and ABC News found.

The $535 million loan to Solyndra Inc., issued by the U.S. Department of Treasury's Federal Financing Bank, included a quarterly interest rate of 1.025 percent, the government bank reported in July. Of 18 Energy Department loans cited in the bank's report, Solyndra's rate was lowest. Eight other Energy Department projects, each also backed by the Federal Financing Bank, came with rates three or four times higher, the report shows.

That treatment is in keeping with the history of the loan to the California solar panel maker, an arrangement inked in September 2009 with great fanfare -- and touted, not long after, during a factory visit from the president. Monthly government bank reports filed since then reveal Solyndra's rate as the lowest for any energy-related project in nearly every report; in every case its rate was well below that of most energy projects, which ranged from cutting-edge electric car makers to wind and solar ventures.

The Department of Energy and Solyndra officials begged to differ saying the loan from the bank and its terms were based upon a formula and hard data such as when the loan was granted and the length of the repayment period. That would appear to be at odds, however, with evidence that Solyndra may not have been such a solid bet.

But records show the advantageous terms came in spite of red flags about the risks of investing in Solyndra. In 2008, as the loan agreement was moving forward, an outside rating agency gave the deal with a B+ grade, a less than optimum score, according to records obtained by iWatch and ABC under the Freedom of Information Act. That same year, the records show, Dun & Bradstreet assigned the company's credit appraisal as "fair."

Analysts say there were warning signs about the deal from the start, when Obama's Department of Energy pitched its first energy loan guarantee as a symbol of the expanding green tech movement. Yet the administration repeatedly took steps that would seem to benefit Solyndra: the Department of Energy announced its loan commitment before all due diligence was completed -- later raising concerns from auditors; the president made a personal visit to tout the company's prospects; and the department agreed to grant Solyndra fast-track approval.

And about that Federal Financing Bank?

The Federal Financing Bank, created by Congress in 1973 as a part of Treasury to reduce the cost of borrowing, referred questions about the Solyndra loan to Treasury. "We don't talk to journalists," a Bank employee told iWatch last week.

Transparency!

And now the money shot you've all been waiting for:

Solyndra's most prolific financial backer is George Kaiser, an Oklahoma oil billionaire who was a bundler of campaign donations for Obama's 2008 race. Kaiser's Argonaut Ventures and its affiliates have been the single largest shareholder of Solyndra, according to SEC filings and other records. The company holds 39 percent of Solyndra's parent company, bankruptcy records filed Tuesday show.

Under terms of the bankruptcy filing, investors including Argonaut -- which led a $75 million round of financing for Solyndra earlier this year -- will stand in line before the federal government and other creditors.

"federal government" = "your tax dollars"

And dig this:

Questions have long persisted about why Obama chose Solyndra to be the first green energy company to benefit from the federal loans program. In May, iWatch and ABC reported that the Energy Department announced its commitment to back Solyndra without first receiving full marketing and legal reviews. That shortcut drew criticism from government auditors, who accused DOE of favoring some applicants, like Solyndra, over others.

And Obama's Office of Budget and Management viewed the deal as riskier to taxpayers than DOE had, iWatch found.

(italics, ours)


As would be expected, Kaiser is staying mum on this whole deal.

So, if you're scoring at home, you have over a half billion in federal loan guarantees largely up in smoke, 1,000 jobs neither created nor saved and most likely, a congressional investigation into an apparent sweetheart deal for a heavyweight Presidential donor.

Because of the lack of competitiveness of green technology in its current state, it remains the greatest example of the federal government picking winners and losers, though, unfortunately, we have yet to see any winners even as designated so by the federal government.



(UPDATE #1): Thank god for bridges, roads and choo-choo trains because we don't think the President will be talking a whole lot about green jobs tonight in his jobs speech.

FBI agents armed with search warrants descended Thursday morning on bankrupt solar company Solynrda.

The investigation comes after a request by the Department of Energy's inspector general, FBI spokesman Peter Lee told NBC Bay Area News.

Agents arrived at Solyndra at 7a.m. and were examining the factory. Solynrda has a skeleton crew of 100 workers on the scene, who are closing the factory down.

"It's been an interesting [two weeks]" says Solyndra spokesperson Dave Miller, referring to both the bankruptcy and the FBI raid. "I don't know what they're looking for...but I haven't seen them take anything."

Solyndra filed for bankruptcy last week, shocking both workers and the Obama administration, which had given the startup $535 million in low interest loans.

The announcement was a devastating blow to Mr. Obama who is set to deliver a speech on job creation Thursday evening.

Congress has demanded a hearing into the matter. Wednesday the company was reported to be for sale.

There are no reports of any arrests at this time.

Solyndra officials made numerous visits -- 20 -- to the White House, according to logs and reporting by The Daily Caller.

Solyndra officials in the logs included chairman and founder Christian Gronet and board members Thomas Baruch and David Prend, according to the Caller.

OK, here's the part where we are going to sound totally paranoid: Wow. That didn't take long. Mere days after filing for bankruptcy the FBI comes swooping in. Really? We're all for quick action and everything but considering who the FBI ultimately answers to, we can't help but think this is all a little too good to be true. Totally paranoid, right?

H/T: W.C. Varones

Because feeling good about yourself is really all that matters

A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another.

It's a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else.

"If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

The GAO report says a plug-in compact car, if recharged at an outlet drawing its power from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4% to 5%. If the feeling of saving the environment from driving an electric car causes people to drive more, that small amount of savings vanishes entirely.

On the bright side of things, at least the demise (for now) of cap and trade will mean we will still have coal-fired plants in which to fire up and which will provide electricity to our death-trap smug-mobiles.

But if cap and trade does manage to resuscitate and effectively kill the coal industry, where is that electricity going to come from? Oh, that’s right. We’ve always got wind and solar power. Unfortunately, those two alternative energies are set with massive inherent drawbacks in their current stage of development.

T. Boone Pickens is sitting on 687 400-feet tall wind turbines as he scratched his plans to “plant” these things out in west Texas. His problem? Getting the power generated to the grid. You see, the fact of the matter with places that are really windy and really sunny (see also: hot), is that no one lives there and right now, the storage and transmission technology is not where it needs to be to in order for wind and solar to be market-competitive. And did we mention that these wind turbine farms have a tendency to make mincemeat of flocks of birds and that solar farms require a massive amount of water, something else in scant supply in hotter climes, in order to keep the panels clean.

Our push for electric power also pushes us further into the hands of some unsavory characters. Half the world’s proven lithium reserves reside in Bolivia whose leftist President is a Hugo Chavez ally.

Hey, we thought this whole alternative energy movement was, in part, so we didn’t have to do business with the planet’s jerk-offs. Sounds like we’re exchanging petrol-dictators for litho-dictators.

We continue charging down the government-mandated green revolution road pursuing these outlandish energy alternatives that aren’t ready for prime-time, do not produce a good return on investment and may in fact be more harmful to the environment than our traditional sources of energy and in the case of ethanol, wreak havoc with the world’s food supplies and prices.

It’s to the point where we are almost forced to cheer for these 300 page amendments that get snuck into bills like cap and trade as these back room deals and concessions signal that the proposed legislation is watered-down to the point of a net zero effect.

Since no one is really interested in the oil reserves setting beneath our feet or nuclear energy, a combination that is real energy indepence, this is all we got.

Great moments in the history of crony capitalism (an update)

A follow-up to the politically-connected solar firm, Solyndra, that received over $500 million in loan guarantees at near-zero interest rates (far below other similar projects that received tax-payer support) and which went bankrupt and which also had their offices raided by the FBI last week. We blogged about this initially, here.

From the Washington Times Washington Post:

The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.

The August 2009 e-mails, released to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.

“We have ended up with a situation of having to do rushed approvals on a couple of occasions (and we are worried about Solyndra at the end of the week),” one official wrote. That Aug. 31, 2009, message, written by a senior OMB staffer and sent to Terrell P. McSweeny, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, concluded, “We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews.”

White House officials said Tuesday that no one in the administration tried to influence the OMB decision on the loan. They stressed that the e-mails show only that the administration had a “quite active interest” in the timing of OMB’s decision.

Solyndra was far from being a solid bet. From our original post:

But records show the advantageous terms came in spite of red flags about the risks of investing in Solyndra. In 2008, as the loan agreement was moving forward, an outside rating agency gave the deal with a B+ grade, a less than optimum score, according to records obtained by iWatch and ABC under the Freedom of Information Act. That same year, the records show, Dun & Bradstreet assigned the company's credit appraisal as "fair."

Analysts say there were warning signs about the deal from the start, when Obama's Department of Energy pitched its first energy loan guarantee as a symbol of the expanding green tech movement. Yet the administration repeatedly took steps that would seem to benefit Solyndra: the Department of Energy announced its loan commitment before all due diligence was completed -- later raising concerns from auditors; the president made a personal visit to tout the company's prospects; and the department agreed to grant Solyndra fast-track approval.

And this:

Questions have long persisted about why Obama chose Solyndra to be the first green energy company to benefit from the federal loans program. In May, iWatch and ABC reported that the Energy Department announced its commitment to back Solyndra without first receiving full marketing and legal reviews. That shortcut drew criticism from government auditors, who accused DOE of favoring some applicants, like Solyndra, over others.

And Obama's Office of Budget and Management viewed the deal as riskier to taxpayers than DOE had, iWatch found.

And as for that "active interest", that just might be George Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire and 2008 Obama campaign bundler who owned 39% of Solyndra's parent company.

But apparently this isn't at all late-breaking news:

The House (Energy and Commerce) committee has been investigating Solyndra’s dealings with the Energy Department for six months. In July , subcommittee members subpoenaed White House documents related to the guarantee.

Questions about the selection process were first raised in a July 2010 audit by the Government Accountability Office. It concluded that the Energy Department “lacked appropriate tools for assessing the progress” of the loan program and that the department treated applicants inconsistently, “favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.”

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of that panel’s oversight and investigations subcommittee, said last week that the FBI raid confirmed their belief that the “darling” of Obama’s green-jobs program was a “bad bet” from the beginning.

“Solyndra was the hallmark of the President’s green jobs program and widely promoted by the administration as a stimulus success story, right up until its bankruptcy and FBI raid,” Upton and Stearns said in a statement on Tuesday. “Let’s learn the lessons of Solyndra before another dollar goes out the door.”

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) and Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) — Democrats on the committee who had once defended the choice of Solyndra — last week also questioned whether they had been misled. In a letter, they wrote that Solyndra chief executive Brian Harrison “did not convey to us the perilous condition of the company, and the Committee should know why. ”

Over a half-billion dollars of tax-payer money to an Obama donor only to prove that solar energy just isn't yet competitive on the open market is an expensive way to learn a lesson in the free market let alone that of political ethics.

Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.







Here's some more of that "new civility" we've been hearing about... in the wake of the announcement that Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) will be stepping down from her seat in Congress, no less.

California Rep. Henry Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the coauthor of the 2009 cap-and-trade climate change bill, decried efforts by the GOP to force the Obama administration into approving a permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline.

"They want to use legislation as a way to act like terrorists. They hold things as hostage," Waxman said. "We almost couldn't fund the government because Republicans wanted to hold that idea hostage, we almost couldn't pay our debts because the Republicans wanted to hold that legislation hostage to their extreme agenda, and I wouldn't be surprised if they scuttled this conference by trying to hold us hostage."

We know exactly where we will be looking to adjudicate blame upon the next act of violence against a public figure.





Did someone say "unexpectedly"?

Sales of new U.S. homes unexpectedly declined in December for the first time in four months, capping the slowest year on record for builders.

Why, yes, and this editon's winner is Bloomberg News.









B-Daddy (drunk-?) blogged the State of the Union address by POTUS this past Tuesday night so you wouldn't have to. Some high-lights:

Opening 75% of offshore resources to oil exploration. The same 75% you previously closed?


Apparently, Obama discovered the oil coming out of the ground in North Dakota. Now he is in favor of natural gas, oh wait, he's not; proposing new regulations for natural gas producers.



He keeps using the line, "send me a bill." No, you already sent us the bill.


Now he's going to interfere in the housing market and interfere in sound lending. Directing the banks to renegotiate mortgages? Welcome back from the dead, Juan Peron.
[Post speech note; Romney can hammer on the theme that government caused this housing bubble in the first place, more intervention props up a market that still needs to deflate.]

(ed. note: we blogged about further government intervention into the housing market here. Some people just never learn)

Millionaire bashing, no real new ideas here. Yes, sir, I am calling this class warfare, because it is built on a foundation of lies. The rich pay twice, first on corporate taxes then on gains. He envisions a nation of dependents, whose lives depend on taxes from the rich. What a poverty of imagination, if that were true we would truly be a nation in poverty.


Going after the cloture rule in the Senate? Really? Don't recall him being for that when he was in the Senate. Asking for a simple up or down vote on nominees? Be careful what you ask for, there will be a Republican President some day.


I think he's finishing. Terrible speech. Nope, back to taking credit for being Commander-In-Chief. Hey, where's the talk about engagement in Iran? Now he's talking Arab Spring and whacking Ghadaffi. He's going to whack Assad too? Who'd have thunk it, a dude named Barack Hussein Obama is all about whacking Arabs?

From B-Daddy's summation, it appeared he talked about de-regulation just as much as the need for further regulation. Incoherency, plain and simple.

Neither he nor the people working for him have a clue. Remember, these are the same people who gush all over themselves with respect to how many food stamps they've been able to issue as an indicator of economic success.

At any rate, thanks for falling on that grenade, bro. So, that others may live!





Shane Atwell reviews the movie Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged.

Do I recommend seeing the movie? Only if you want to know everything you can about Rand and Atlas or if you want to know very little. In the latter case the movie will give you a smattering of information on several aspects of Rand's life and the book with little effort. But you really should just read the book.

tea party girl goes solar!

“The polar bears can suck-it!”

Yep. That’s what I had to tell most of the solar vendors visiting our home. It’s not that I actually have anything against polar bears, they’re pretty efficient seal hunters. But I was shopping for cheaper fixed-priced energy. Period. I still think the concept of man-made global warming is a bunch of fabricated junk-science cr*#. I found that trying to ask a bunch washed out mortgage brokers re-trained as solar salesmen to fast forward past the green B.S. is like asking an overseas customer service rep to think for themselves.

Heh.








For those of you tired of the nagging and whining regarding "fairness" and income inequality from an administration that is the very epitome of the 1% and whose personnel rotate between it and Wall Street with the greatest of alacrity, you'd be pleased to know that 36 members of the President's executive staff owe over $800,000 in back taxes. For those of you scoring at home, that works out to about $23,000/person.

We know we are opining naive but how jaded and cynical does one have to be to go on the "fairness" offensive when one's own outfit is the most egregious violator of this completely undefineable* notion of fairness.

(* undefineable by our standards, not theirs)





Sir Charles at Doo Doo Economics has a SLOBs home page primer/how-to post here. Who are the SLOBs (San Diego Local Order of Bloggers)? It's a coalition of area bloggers committed to free markets, limited government, personal liberty and constitutional fidelity. We've got Randian objectivists, registered Democrats, Ron Paul supporters, libertarian-leaning conservatives (sage-brush conservatives?**) socially-conservative evangelicals and Catholics and independents.

All the world's problems are solved at our all-too-infrequent beer summits where we take a small amount of pride in steering a few of the SLOBs into that wondrous universe that is the San Diego craft beer scene.

As you might imagine, we don't do "group think" very well so if you want some fresh thinking and ideas that run counter to the narrative that is spoon-fed to you from the government-media complex, we certainly encourage you to bookmark the SLOBs and give us a "like" if you wouldn't mind. Thanks!




And speaking of SLOBs, Leslie at Temple of Mut has a great round-up of news and views herself, including that of the Scorpion Queen, Governor Jan Brewer, faith-based global-warming insanity and a potential SLOBs endorsement of Carl DeMaio for SD mayor? Go on over and check it out.



OK, gang. That's it for today. We'll see you all tomorrow.




** A nod to Barry Goldwater and the fact that the libertarian strain runs a bit deeper in the conservatives of the West/Southwest than other geographic regions of this great country.


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Quickies

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A round-up of news items, columns, articles and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.



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Work prevented us from attending one of the many "Stand Up for Religious Freedom" rallies that were held around the country on Friday.

One who did, Dawn Wildman of the Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition had this to say:

Today I attended one of the 140 Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies. This one took place in San Diego, CA , where over 2000 people exercised their First Amendment right in all its forms. They stood up against the HHS mandate that flies in the face of their religious beliefs. They held a peaceful assembly of citizens seeking redress of the federal government due to this latest assault on the US Constitution. For those that are a little fuzzy on the First Amendment this is it in its entirety:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So while Congress did not actually make the HHS mandate which forces religious affiliates as employers to pay for and give their employees free contraception, it is still the government under the tutelage of Secretary Sebilius who is demanding that religious organizations facilitate this law. Many speakers referenced this mandate as a “conscience tax” and I couldn’t agree more.

Here's B-Daddy of The Liberator Today:

I was struck by how impassioned both the speakers and participants were. The President's policies are uniting people of faith against him. The speakers all spoke of the importance of freedom and conscience to the proper functioning of government. They spoke of the continued assault on religious liberty. They spoke of the laughable accounting shell game of the administration: "Religious associations don't have to pay for birth control, only their insurers will be required to provide that." My personal estimate was that about 700 people turned up. We got honks of support throughout the rally.

“Religious freedom is not a gift from politicians: It is a gift from God,” said Bishop Flores. “Today’s debate is not about the access to contraceptives…it is about the federal government forcing the Church to act against its teachings”.

And Leslie of Temple of Mut has a very comprehensive round-up here to which she adds:

Our opponents must be very worried. They sense they have “awakened a sleeping giant and filled it with a terrible resolve”. The elite media reports I am reviewing, with the jaundiced eye of a recovering reporter, are going out of their way to minimize this unification of religious faiths across this country in standing behind the Catholic Church in its defiance to implement the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate to offer contraceptive/abortion/sterilization coverage in health plans.

For those of you in the tea party/freedom coalition movement who are either pining for or conversely running away from any social issues, relax! This issue is perfect. An authoritative and overreaching government mandating goods and services provisions upon a private entity and which also happens to violate the fundamental religious conscience of a religious entity. What are we missing?

If you wanted an issue over which to beat the head of a dreadful administration and which also helps define your guiding principles, it doesn't get any more basic and fundamental than the 1st amendment, gang, so let's have at it and pull no punches!





And speaking of dreadful... similar to his Skip Gates the police acted stupidly remarks, the President can't help putting his foot in his mouth whenever he goes off-script and away from the teleprompter.

President Barack Obama weighed in Friday on the shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, calling it a national tragedy — and saying that the young man reminded him of his own children.

"When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids," Obama said in the Rose Garden. "I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this. And that everybody pull together."

Obama has come under fire from some black leaders for failing to comment on a case that has become a major national story — and brought thousands of Americans into the streets for demonstrations calling for the arrest of Martin's shooter. One black leader even wondered why Obama called a Georgetown student who was attacked by Rush Limbaugh but not Martin's family. Obama's comments Friday represent the first time the president has addressed the growing controversy.


"My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon,"
Obama said. "All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves."

That's his main message? Bizarre yet entirely predictable. There you have it, ladies and gentlemen: when asked to offer some commentary and perspective on the shooting, he serves up one of the most self-serving and narcissitic statements we have ever heard. Gawd, this guy is a piece of work.






And from the Nice Try Department, the President running away as fast as he can from Solyndra:

"Obviously we wish Solyndra hadn't gone bankrupt. Part of the reason they did was the Chinese were subsidizing their solar industry and flooding the market in ways Solyndra couldn't compete. But understand, this was not our program per se."

-- President Obama talking to National Public Radio's "Marketplace."

President Obama is on a swing-state campaign blitz this week, looking to stifle voter anger over high energy prices. While the White House is casting the trip as an effort to lay out Obama's vision for future energy abundance, much of the message is aimed at reducing the supply of blame.

And how does that square with reality? From FactCheck.org:

President Obama exaggerated when defending his administration’s approval of a $535 million loan guarantee to Solyndra, a now-defunct solar company.

Obama referred to Solyndra’s loan at an Oct. 6 press conference as “a loan guarantee program that predates me.” That’s not accurate. It’s true that the Energy Policy Act of 2005 created a loan guarantee program for clean-energy companies developing “innovative technologies.” But Solyndra’s loan guarantee came under another program created by the president’s 2009 stimulus for companies developing “commercially available technologies.”

The president also overstated past Republican support for the program, saying “all of them in the past have been supportive of this loan guarantee program.” Republicans overwhelmingly opposed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and some of them even voted against the Energy Policy Act of 2005 at a time when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.

Independent auditors and even officials within the administration warned Team O that Solyndra was a dog but they cronied ahead anyway with highly favorable interest rates and then shoved their cronies to the front of the bankruptcy line ahead of the tax-payers when the $535 million house of cards came tumbling down.


And you'll love this:

Several key White House offices were involved with the Obama administration’s messaging plans and other preparations as the collapse of the taxpayer-backed solar company Solyndra was imminent, newly released documents show.

The latest White House documents delivered to House Republicans on Friday again highlight the extent to which senior administration officials braced for the fallout as Solyndra – a company President Obama had personally visited – was about to go under.

A White House memo that noted the danger of “imminent bankruptcy” at the end of August 2011 says, “OMB, DPC and NEC have been working with press and OLA to be prepared for this news to break.”

Acronym translation: OMB is the Office of Management and Budget, DPC is the Domestic Policy Council, NEC is the National Economic Council and OLA is the Office of Legal Affairs.

(italics, ours)

Working with the press? We were previously unaware that one of the job descriptions of the 4th estate was to frame a message and provide cover for incompetence if not outright malfeasance in the executive branch. We kind of knew it along along, however, there is still some shock value to see it mentioned in such a casual and matter-of-fact manner.




More media double-standard red meat, this time with respect to gas prices/energy policy:









Column headline of the week:

Why Men Opting-Out Should Make You Angry

Is it us or is there cottage industry within the feminist movement that agitates women to be in a constant state of being pissed-off?




So, who is it that is waging a war against women?

Obamacare contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and employers. Five are especially-harmful for women, be they Moms, singles, or retirees.

The jobs-killing Obamacare law contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and employers. Many of these tax increases fall on families making less than $250,000--a direct violation of candidate Obama's promise not to raise "any form" of taxes on these families. In less than a week, the second anniversary of Obamacare being signed into law will take place. The Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments about the constitutionality of Obamacare next week.

Out of the 20 new or higher taxes in Obamacare, here are the five that most hurt women.

Read about them at the link.





And finally, the way NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was firing off suspensions and fines this past Wednesday as punishment for the New Orleans Saints' participation in Bountygate reminded us of Michael Corleone wacking members of the other crime families in the baptism scene of the God Father I.



Sean Payton. Wack. Mickey Loomis. Blam. Greg Williams. Pop. Joe Vitt. Wham.

More carnage than we've ever seen in one day in the NFL. Lessons learned: don't lie, don't ever lie to Roger Goodell.


OK, gang, that's it. We'll see you all tomorrow.

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Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.






More news from the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin debacle down in Florida:

On Friday George Zimmerman Sues NBC Over Edited 911 Tape Report was a top story. Here is the recap: (TMZ) Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman has filed a lawsuit against NBC over the way it edited his 911 call -- placed moments before Martin was shot -- claiming the network falsely made Zimmerman look like a "hostile racist."
You'll recall, NBC launched an internal investigation over the tape after it aired the edited recording -- which made it sound like Zimmerman immediately told police that Martin was black, without being prompted.

In actuality, the full 911 tape reveals Zimmerman only referred to Martin as "black" when responding to a question from the dispatcher about Trayvon's race.

Zimmerman accuses NBC of creating a "false and defamatory misimpression using the oldest form of yellow journalism: manipulating Zimmerman's own words, splicing together disparate parts of the recording to create the illusion of statements that Zimmerman never actually made."

Two things: 1) We look forward to George Zimmerman sitting on a small mountain of NBC's cash when all is said and done and 2) this is just a gentle reminder of how corrupt and degenerate this country's media has become.







Ugh... We're forced to blog about this guy:

From the Washington Times:

The White House deleted a petition Friday on its web site demanding that President Obama rescind an invitation to “Gangnam style” rapper Psy to sing at a Christmas concert in Washington, due to the performer’s anti-American rants.

The petition was signed by about 500 people who object to the singer’s scheduled performance, which Mr. Obama is to attend. But the White House said it took down the petition because it violated the terms of participation on the administration’s “We the People” web site.

Psy, a 34-year-old South Korean performer whose “Gangnam style” video is the most-watched of all time, apologized Friday for making obscene comments about U.S. troops at a protest concert in 2004 in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He reportedly sang:

“Kill those f–ing Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives.”
“Kill those f–ing Yankees who ordered them to torture.”

“Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers.”

“Kill them all slowly and painfully.”

In his apology, the rap star said, “As a proud South Korean who was educated in the United States and lived there for a very significant part of my life, I understand the sacrifices American servicemen and women have made to protect freedom and democracy in my country and around the world.”

“The song in question — from eight years ago — was part of a deeply emotional reaction to the war in Iraq and the killing of two innocent Korean civilians that was part of the overall antiwar sentiment shared by others around the world at that time,” he said in a statement. “While I’m grateful for the freedom to express one’s self, I’ve learned there are limits to what language is appropriate and I’m deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted. I will forever be sorry for any pain I have caused anyone by those words.”

(italics, ours)


8 years ago... Remember? That was back when dissent was patriotic. Besides, we've moved way beyond all that torture stuff. We won't be holding our breath, however, for a PSY rap-rant on indefinite detentions and/or drone strike assassinations to be performed at this concert.







ObamaCare: improving the financial health of lobbyists one congressional staffer at a time.

Liz Fowler worked for Democratic Senator Max Baucus in the first half of last decade, and so it wasn’t surprising when she cashed out to run the lobbying shop at Wellpoint, the nation’s largest private insurer.

After all, that’s what Max Baucus staffers do. They become high-paid lobbyists for powerful companies dependent on government. Former Baucus chief of staff David Castagnetti is now a lobbyist partner at Mehlman, Vogel, Catagnetti. Successor Jeff Forbes is a partner at Cauthen, Forbes, and Williams. Baucus’s chief trade counsel Scott Parven doesn’t have a lobbying firm named after him, because he sold his firm to K Street giant Akin Gump. There are literally dozens of others.

It also wasn’t surprising when Baucus hired her back to help write Obamacare. After all, Baucus is famously close with K Street and industry lobbyists.

Given Baucus’s central role in drafting Obamacare, and lobbyists’ access to Baucus, it wasn’t surprising either when the bill won the backing of the biggest health-industry lobbies in the country — Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the American Medical Association, and the American Hospital Association.

The hand-in-hand public-private corporatism so derided during the Bush years has re-branded itself to become the single greatest feature of the Obama administration. Congratulations on this feat that was accomplished in no small part by the silence if not advocacy of the government/media/entertainment complex.






Not all calls for genocide are created or viewed equally:

Is promoting genocide a human-rights violation? You might think that's an easy question. But it isn't at Human Rights Watch, where a bitter debate is raging over how to describe Iran's calls for the destruction of Israel. The infighting reveals a peculiar standard regarding dictatorships and human rights and especially the Jewish state.

Human Rights Watch is the George Soros-funded operation that has outsize influence in governments, newsrooms and classrooms world-wide. Some at the nonprofit want to denounce Iran's regime for inciting genocide. "Sitting still while Iran claims a 'justification to kill all Jews and annihilate Israel is a position unworthy of our great organization," Sid Sheinberg, the group's vice chairman, wrote to colleagues in a recent email.

But Executive Director Kenneth Roth, who runs the nonprofit, strenuously disagrees.

Asked in 2010 about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement that Israel "must be wiped off the map," Mr. Roth suggested that the Iranian president has been misunderstood. "There was a real question as to whether he actually said that," Mr. Roth told The New Republic, because the Persian language lacks an idiom for wiping off the map. Then again, Mr. Ahmadinejad's own English-language website translated his words that way, and the main alternative translation—"eliminated from the pages of history"—is no more benign. Nor is Mr. Ahmadinejad an outlier in the regime. Iran's top military officer declared earlier this year that "the Iranian nation is standing for its cause that is the full annihilation of Israel."

A Clintonian torturing of the English language to be sure when we all know the official party line of Iran and about every other bad actor over there in that neck of the woods.





Turns out Mitt Romney was spot-on regarding Benghazi. So explain to us again why it is he is taking so much grief for saying Obama won the election because he promised free stuff.

The city of Detroit faces a major financial crisis and one member of city council thinks President Barack Obama should step in and help.

City Council member JoAnn Watson said Tuesday the citizens support of Obama in last month's election was enough reason for the president to bailout the struggling the city. (Click the video player to listen)

"Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president and there ought to be a quid pro quo and you ought to exercise leadership on that," said Watson. "Of course, not just that, but why not?"

Nearly 75 percent of Wayne County voters pulled the lever for Obama in November.

"After the election of Jimmy Carter, the honorable Coleman Alexander Young, he went to Washington, D.C. He came home with some bacon," said Watson. "That's what you do."

Young served as Detroit's mayor for 20 years and served as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1977 to 1981.

We're sorry. Not free per se, rather quid pro quo meaning Detroit and Wayne County vote for Obama and the rest of us pay for another four years.

Related: Is there a correlation between the percentage of votes going to Obama in a particular city/county and that city/county's fiscal dysfunctionality?








And finally...

You may be shocked to learn that some coastal types that appear on MSNBC on a regular basis don't think you are paying enough at the pump and would like to see that price go higher to make alternative energy sources more competitive.

It's telling that they no longer speak of making wind and solar more competitive by improving the technology of wind and solar rather making wind and solar more competitive by taxing oil and natural gas, i.e. sticking it to the consumer, you, in order to fulfill their half-witted, agenda-driven energy fantasies.




OK, gang, that's it for today. We'll see you all tomorrow.

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More great moments in the history of crony capitalism

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The gift that keeps on giving...


Not everyone lost out in that train-wreck that was Solyndra; the now-bankrupt solar panel firm that received a $537 million loan guarantee from the highly suspect Department of Energy green loan program back in 2009.

Via the Free Beacon the Wall St. Journal reports:

Argonaut Ventures I LLC—a private-equity fund linked to George Kaiser, a fundraiser for President Barack Obama—and Madrone Partners LP are set to pilot a reorganized shell company out of the wreckage of Solyndra, part of a Chapter 11 plan that promises scant repayment of a $528 million federal loan.

The reorganized shell company could be a vehicle to transform the money Solyndra lost in the solar-panel-manufacturing business, losses that total “significantly more than one-half billion dollars,” into future tax breaks for the private-equity firms, according to the DOE and IRS.

Bankruptcy filings reveal that Argonaut and Madrone could potentially write-down the Solyndra losses saving themselves hundreds of millions of dollars of future income taxes.

And similar to the GM and Chrysler bankruptcy cramdown, private investors, like Argonaut, will be given priority status over the tax-payers in a loan restructuring deal worked out between Solyndra and the DOE back in 2011.

Please remember this sort of shenanigans that have been rampant with this administration when you hear about the success of their green energy program next week.

The green jobs boondoggle

How are all those green jobs working out?

Even after fudging numbers and ignoring the huge subsidies, a liberal think tank reports that growth in the alternative-energy sector lags the rest of the economy.

Green jobs were supposed to be our salvation, both for the earth and for the economy, according to the Obama administration. White House policy based on this flawed premise led to offshore and onshore drilling bans and the locking-up of energy-rich lands while huge alternative energy subsidies (aka "investments") found their way into the stimulus and other legislation.

As happens when government tries to pick winners and losers, the government lost — no, we all lost. As has happened in countries such as Spain, this misallocation of resources has succeeded only in stalling our economy as unemployment and debt grow.

In Spain's case, it was found that for every "green" job created, 2.2 jobs were lost in the rest of the economy.

Along comes the Brookings Institution with a report touting the fact that nearly 2.7 million people brought home paychecks in 2010 working in the "clean economy." That's a 3.4% increase in "green jobs" since 2003, and it sounds terrific until you realize the economy as a whole grew at a 4.2% rate over the same period.

As the folks at HotAir.com duly note, Brookings got to its conclusions by including, for example, all mass transit workers regardless of the actual energy source. They also lump in people such as organic farmers and nuclear energy workers, though the greenies have never touted nuclear energy as "clean" or nuclear jobs as "green."

And let's not forget to factor into these job numbers the massive amounts of subsidies (i.e., your tax dollars) that are pumped into the green economy to further prop up these job numbers.

The article cites an Energy Department report which stated that the average subsidy per megawatt-hour for all energy was $1.65. However, for wind and solar that number jumps to $24.

And knowing what we have known and are continuing to find out about ethanol, solar and wind, do those even qualify as green jobs, anymore?

Great moments in the history of crony capitalism

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Change

Sanjay Wagle was a venture capitalist and Barack Obama fundraiser in 2008, rallying support through a group he headed known as Clean Tech for Obama.

Shortly after Obama’s election, he left his California firm to join the Energy Department, just as the administration embarked on a massive program to stimulate the economy with federal investments in clean-technology firms.


Following an enduring Washington tradition, Wagle shifted from the private sector, where his firm hoped to profit from federal investments, to an insider’s seat in the administration’s $80 billion clean-energy investment program.

He was one of several players in venture capital, which was providing financial backing to start-up clean-tech companies, who moved into the Energy Department at a time when the agency was seeking outside expertise in the field. At the same time, their industry had a huge stake in decisions about which companies would receive government loans, grants and support.

During the next three years, the department provided $2.4 billion in public funding to clean-energy companies in which Wagle’s former firm, Vantage Point Venture Partners, had invested, a Washington Post analysis found. Overall, the Post found that $3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama administration staffers and advisers.

Picking winners and losers in any particular industry is not the business that a presidential administration should be in. But it's particularly galling when that administration keeps picking the losers... after they were told by third-party auditors and investigators that they were losers as in the case of Solyndra, the DOE's $535 million black hole.





Not coincidentally, Fred Upton (R-MI), who has been wishing to speak with White House officials knee-deep in the DOE's clean energy loan program, is running out of patience with the White House's recalcitrance.

Staffers who once worked for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel may have to answer questions about their involvement in a botched solar energy deal.

Congressional Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are putting together subpoenas for five White House aides who allegedly worked to pour more than $500 million in federal loans guarantees into Solyndra, a California solar power company that has since gone defunct. It filed for bankruptcy last year despite the loan support.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to meet on Friday to issue subpoenas for five executive branch employees that they say were involved in the Department of Energy loan given to Solyndra. This will be the third subpoena the committee has considered to obtain information or testimony regarding the Solyndra case.

The staffers being targeted include Kevin Carroll, Kelly Colyar and Fouad Saad of the Office of Management and Budget, Heather Zichal, a White House aide who worked on energy and Aditya Kumar, who worked for Rahm Emanuel in the West Wing and whose name appears in emails on the subject of Solyndra.

It has been one year since the committee started investigating the Solyndra meltdown and to date, the White House has yet to comply with the committee's desire for a sit down.

This must be more of that transparency we've been hearing so much about.

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More green on green violence

Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation in Congress on Monday to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert in California by scuttling some 13 big solar plants and wind farms planned for the region.

But before the bill to create two new Mojave national monuments has even had its first hearing, the California Democrat has largely achieved her aim. Regardless of the legislation’s fate, her opposition means that few if any power plants are likely to be built in the monument area, a complication in California’s effort to achieve its aggressive goals for renewable energy.

Alternative energy and weening ourselves off of fossil fuels is imperative and for the sake of the planet must be addressed immediately… until it doesn’t.

Setting our snark aside for a moment, Feinstein is doing the right thing as the land was donated by a nature conservancy and we’re assuming not for the purposes of being turned into a solar farm. KT has his thoughts on the matter here.

But this little urinary Olympiad between competing environmental interests is what we will see more of and with increasing frequency in the future precisely because the state of California has locked itself into a completely unrealistic goal of obtaining fully a third of its electricity by 2020 from renewable sources which for those scoring at home is just 10 years off.

Photo image of the day

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This was the scene last week on Harbor Dr. here in San Diego and it was a symbol of the efficacy of green/alternative energy in its current state.


(please click to enlarge... the camera-in-phone did not cooperate on the first take)

This is a wind turbine blade on Harbor Drive here in San Diego. Transported on a big ol' flat bed towed by a big ol' diesel and escorted by a couple of chase vehicles. They do have a tendency to tie-up things on Harbor as they are matriculating their way down the street. Problem is - it's heading the wrong way. Instead of heading out to the desert or east county where the bird-wacking turbine farms are, it's heading back towards the 10th St. terminal from whence it came. Whatever the problem is, it's a pretty costly mistake. Not that the wind and solar industries probably care - they're the chosen ones. Check out the subsidies granted to these two sectors as compared to other engergy sectors:

Not too shabby, huh? Maybe when the government decides to stop conferring 1% status on not-yet-market-ready technologies and stops depending upon places like China with their deplorable environmental policies for the lithium needed for wind and solar, perhaps we can avoid scenes like the above.


Time's short... we'll have an update later.

Quickies

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A round-up of news items, columns, articles and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.






Glenn Reynolds presents his own Occupy cirriculum:

2) Bourgeois vs. Non-Bourgeois Revolutions: A Comparison and Contrast. The Occupy movement left its major sites—McPherson Square in D.C., Zuccotti Park in Manhattan, Dewey Square in Boston—filthy and disheveled. By contrast, the tea party protests famously left the Washington Mall and other locations cleaner than they found them, with members proudly performing cleanup duties.

This unit would note that social-protest movements are sometimes orderly and sometimes disorderly as a matter of approach, and it would compare the effectiveness and ultimate success of such relentlessly bourgeois movements as the tea party, the pre-1964 Civil Rights movement, Women's Suffrage activists, and the American Revolution, against such anti-Bourgeois movements as the post-1968 Black Power and New Left movements, and the French Revolution.

Which accomplished more lasting good? Is Max Weber's Protestant work ethic applicable to social movements?

Southern talk:

We have utilize a few, uhh, coloquialisms of our own but being native Southern Californians, we don't know if the following accounts for regional-speak:

Busy? "Busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest."

See you tomorrow? "Lord willing and the river don't rise."

Someone forget or srew-up your name upon a subsequent meeting? "Call us what you want, just don't call us late for dinner."






Spinsters.com on capitalism and charity:

Capitalism, aka the free market, is the best assurance of individual and societal prosperity. Turns out, capitalism is also the best spur towards charity and generosity to the less fortunate. People are most generous to others when their own needs are secure. Capitalism provides the economic security necessary to inspire charity. The cold-hearted businessman is a tired Marxist myth.

B-Daddy has a round-up of news events himself and which includes this take-down of the faith-based global warming climate change community from the Wall Street Journal:

The Trenberth letter tells us that decarbonization of the world's economy would "drive decades of economic growth." This is not a scientific statement nor is there evidence it is true. A premature global-scale transition from hydrocarbon fuels would require massive government intervention to support the deployment of more expensive energy technology. If there were economic advantages to investing in technology that depends on taxpayer support, companies like Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, Solar Millenium, SpectraWatt, Solyndra, Ener1 and the Renewable Energy Development Corporation would be prospering instead of filing for bankruptcy in only the past few months.

B-Daddy has long claimed that the warmers rejection of a carbon tax in return for dropping the income tax is proof of their purely statist intentions and we believe him.






Terrific: We're No. 1!...

... in per capita debt.

It's come to this: Asian American Journalists Association releases guidelines on Jeremy Lin media coverage.






Headline: Exclusive: State Department quietly warning region on Syrian WMDs

The State Department has begun coordinating with Syria's neighbors to prepare for the handling of President Bashar al-Assad's extensive weapons of mass destruction if and when his regime collapses, The Cable has learned.

This week, the State Department sent a diplomatic demarche to Syria's neighbors Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, warning them about the possibility of Syria's WMDs crossing their borders and offering U.S. government help in dealing with the problem, three Obama administration officials confirmed to The Cable. For concerned parties both inside and outside the U.S. government, the demarche signifies that the United States is increasingly developing plans to deal with the dangers of a post-Assad Syria -- while simultaneously highlighting the lack of planning for how to directly bring about Assad's downfall.

Who wants to bet that we will find quite a bit of Hussein-era Iraqi WMDs should this come to pass? However, we're glad we are thinking this issue through ahead of time vs. supporting a completely haphazard and unauthorized kinetic military action in Libya to protect civilians take out military targets take out a foreign leader and which resulted in thousands of RPGs going unaccounted for. There has been pretty much zero media coverage of this circumstance in the past 4-6 months.




Gotta run... may be back with more fun later today.

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