Green jobs...fiddlesticks.
I'm sure many of you know of the recent Solyndra debacle emanating out of Silicon Valley. News of it's young life and sudden demise has been headlines all over the world for the last month. For those of you who may have missed the story, here goes.
Solyndra, a six year old solar panel maker and a poster child for the Obama Administration's inane love affair for "green jobs technology" with revenues of $140 million in 2010, folded under the weight of puny market share, intense competition from China and a $530million gift loan from the Obama White House's Department of Energy. It's business model was so appealing to Mr. Obama and his vision for clean tech jobs, that the President visited the facility in Fremont, California in May 2010(see picture above) and explicitly blessed its purpose on earth, by saying, "the future is here." Solyndra's promise of jobs while serving as a gleaming example of the Obama green energy platform was clearly the darling of his Presidential agenda, second only to mandated health care. Note the word "was".
Earlier this month, Solyndra flopped badly and quickly. Solyndra now shuttered, wasted $530million of taxpayer money that we don't have to spare on a bet that it would succeed. 1,100 people lost their jobs, any back pay and medical benefits. If that wasn't bad enough publicity for a nagging unemployment-haunted Obama White House, the FBI raided Solyndra's corporate offices earlier this month grubbing for evidence of fraud and corporate malfeasance (see picture above). Meanwhile, the "greenies" have gone underground. The Obamaistas are equally in hiding on this one. But that's just part of the story.
At the end of President George W. Bush's presidency, the Solyndra issue and low interest guaranteed loan was on the table awaiting the green light for a viable green project. To his credit, the embattled and bruised President Bush shelved the loan for the next President to consider. Mr. Bush didn't think it had merit. He saw the value of photovoltaic cells but smelled rotten eggs on this deal.
After President Obama was elected and took ownership of the Oval Office, Solyndra rose from the ashes atop the to do list. With new liberal momentum and a chance to show the world that the USA was the new author of the fashionable green technology fad, Mr. Obama seized the day and fast-tracked the obscene loan amount to a sputtering bottom line company that even Mr. Obama's own Office of Management and Budget (OMB) advised against such a deal. Do you think politics was at play here? Totally.
Quickly, Solyndra with new funds in hand and flush with cash, set out to build another huge plant off the banks of the I-880 (aka the Nimitz freeway) in southern Alameda County in full view of all the commuting honest hard-working taxpayers of the East Bay. (Bet they didn't know they had a stake in that black hole?)
Solyndra hired the most revered, experienced and expensive commercial/industrial builder in the Bay Area, Rudolph and Sletten, and proceeded to build a new state of the art robotic facility, known as FAB 2, to the cost of $733million. FAB 2, augmented the existing plant known as, FAB 1, a perfectly suitable plant just down the street, opened to much gleeful fanfare and liberal smugness in September 2010. In fact, I passed it many times on the freeway and marveled at it's apparent glistening new age presence. What is that? I muttered. However, I had my passing doubts. A solar panel company in a new magnificent shrine to technology in Fremont? However, little did I know it was a shell of something much more sinister.
In the Presidential race of 2008, a well-connected billionaire, George Kaiser, natural gas man and philanthropist from Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a top money rainmaker for Barack Obama. His fund raising efforts and that of his many fellow billionaire brethren paid off handsomely for Obama and for them. Mr. Obama was elected 44th President of the United States. Along with being one of the richest men in the world through inheritance and gas, Kaiser also invested in risky business ventures. One such venture was the capital funding of Solyndra. Kaiser became the largest private investor in Solyndra. Shortly after Obama's inauguration in 2009, Kaiser's Solyndra received a gift from the Obama White House. It was a Get Well card with a $530million guaranteed loan enclosed for the expansion of his struggling enterprise. Payback, if you will, but with strings attached. Message given to Solyndra: make this work and make me look good, 2012 is just around the corner. However, Solyndra's wellness became fleeting...quickly. Best laid plans went awry. Mr. Obama failed once again...he was not pleased. Sometimes crony capitalism lays an egg, Solyndra case in point.
With a complicit Mr. Obama and governmental agencies approbation, the company is now toast. Promises broken. No new jobs. No customer demand. No lower manufacturing costs. No new state or local revenues. Loan default. Bets lost. Reputations trashed. Credibility damaged. Mr. Obama bloodied.
However, all this aside, stunningly, Mr. Obama's commitment to his pals overshadows even this spectacular default. It has been reported that any assets remaining from the dissolution of Solyndra under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy protection statute, will be paid to the investors first, that includes the billionaire investor, Kaiser. What's left will be returned to the taxpayers who footed the loan. Frustratingly, we take it on the chin...again. When will this madness end?
So, as the FBI carts away thousands of company records from Solyndra in the hopes of finding something that will exonerate the White House's perceived ineptitude and criminality and shift blame and guilt to others (a common refrain from the Obamaistas), Mr. Obama with teeth a-shining and mouth a-blazing rhetoric touts his new feeble plan of job creation. But, honestly, is anybody listening to him anymore?
In closing, a bit of pedestrian advice to Mr. Business Owner, just in case the President calls you for a visit to your company, noting his dubious track record in business and creating jobs the last 33 months, you may want to decline the offer. His cold icy touch seems to be the kiss of death. Latest example: S O L Y N D R A.
Question is, will this story, "Greengate", result in Mr. Obama's own self-inflicted political death blow, or, will he deftly foist this humiliating loss upon others? Only time will tell.
And winter is coming...
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