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Song Parodies -> "Green Deals (Solyndra™ Bankruptcy)"

Original Song Title:

"Green Fields"

 (MP3)
Original Performer:

The Brothers Four

Parody Song Title:

"Green Deals (Solyndra™ Bankruptcy)"

Parody Written by:

Fiddlegirl and Tommy Turtle

The Lyrics

Under-rated, under-played, little-known OS was a #2 chart hit for the group in 1960. Slow, melancholy "torch song" (pining for lost love), which is sooo apropos: We pine as "someone" (cough) torches more than half a billion of our tax dollars.

For those who've been living on Mars -- surely the story made the news throughout the Anglophone world? (TT: "Anglo, phone home!") (FG: See what happens when TT doesn't post for a long time? A lot of humor gets stored up, and like a lot of other things stored for a long time, a large amount of it goes bad. ;)

Where were we? Oh, yeah... n/m, gotta leave something for the footnotes, of course! ... Magnificent, CD-quality OS video, from the days when "singers" could actually *sing*, here.


Once, there were "green" deals:
"Juice" from the Sun   [1]
Claimed that the dollars
Like rivers, from it, run
Turns ... out, a "blue sky"   [2]
As dark clouds grow above
Bush disapproved it;
Obama gave a shove(-l)   [3]
B'rack and his cronies extolled
Slew: "green" deals   [4]

"Green" deals are gone now
Bucks: get back none   [5]
Us? Our tax dollars?
Like blood, see: from wound, run
Gone: half a billion
Loot shlepped bought 'Bama's heart   [6]
Gone to the donors
It funded dreams, not smart   [7]
Watch as our greenbacks, a "sea"
Turn to foam

We'll never know
How many more "in play"
Stimulus: $ Ten million --
-- Per job: High ... price to pay   [8]
We only know
There's nothing left for us
Nothing of our tax bucks
Just a "stimul-bust"

Barack keeps on trying
'Spite of the burn
Four hundred billion
Why won't he ever learn?   [9]
He can't create jobs
By waving magic wand   [10]
Only the markets
Of which he isn't fond  
Let the "free markets" be free:
Jobs, again!   [11]



[1] "Juice" = electricity (US only?) Also, mobster loan-shark slang for exorbitant interest rates on a loan. We taxpayers got zero interest and lost all of the principal (due to a bad principle, heh!). We were "juiced", all right: Squeezed dry and left to rot.

[2] "Blue Sky" -- "Kansas banking commissioner J. N. Dolley, railing against 'blue sky merchants' when pushing for passage of the Kansas (securities fraud) statute in 1910, observed that certain fraudulent investments were 'backed by nothing but the blue skies of Kansas'."
(Paging Patrick... Paging Patrick McWilliams....)

Since become a common term for stocks of fraudulent or groundless investment schemes, and the laws against them are commonly called "Blue Sky" laws. (So, when do the indictments start raining down - on the Solyndra execs, and *on the POTUS for applying pressure for approval*, despite the mountainous evidence that it was doomed from the start?)

[3] Gee, I wonder how that superfluous "-l" got in there?


[4]
Solyndra, a company that planned to build a new factory to make solar panels, applied for a Gov-guaranteed loan under President George W. Bush's Energy Policy Act of 2005. People who actually know something about business and investment, as opposed to career politicians, told Bush the proposal wasn't viable, and in fact, that their projections showed that the company would run out of money in September 2011. (Hold that thought!) The application was denied, very near the end of Bush's term.

President Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. On March 20, 2009 - yes, your math is right, that's only two months later, and just over two months after the previous denial -- the Energy Dept. issued an enthusiastic press release, saying it would grant the $535 million loan guarantee, and that it would

".... create thousands of new jobs in the U.S. while deploying its solar panels across the U.S. and around the world.

"This investment is part of President Obama's aggressive strategy to put Americans back to work and reduce our dependence on foreign oil by developing clean, renewable sources of energy," Secretary Chu said. "We can create millions of new, good paying jobs that can't be outsourced. Instead of relying on imports from other countries to meet our energy needs, we'll rely on America's innovation, America's resources, and America's workers."

"Secretary Chu is moving aggressively to accelerate important Department of Energy investments that can create jobs and transform the way America uses and produces energy. This allows the Department of Energy to offer its first loan guarantee within the first two months of the Obama Administration...."
See the link in the outro.


STRICTLY COINCIDENTAL:

"It was later revealed that the company's shareholders and executives had made substantial donations to Obama's campaign, that the company had spent a large sum of money on lobbying, and that Solyndra executives had had many meetings with White House officials."

The largest private investments in Solyndra were on behalf of billionaire George Kaiser, a major fundraiser for Obama in 2008. Kaiser himself donated $53,500 to Obama’s 2008 election campaign.

***He is logged as having visited the White House four times in the week or so before the loan was granted.***

(Hey! We though Obama *hated* rich people, and wanted to "soak them all"! ... Guess that's only if they don't raise funds for his election.)

Ben Bierman, executive vice president of operations and engineering for Solyndra, donated $5,500 to Obama’s election campaign. Karen Alter, senior vice president of marketing, donated $23,000 in 2008. Solyndra board members have donated at least another $27,400 to Democratic campaigns and affiliates.


CART BEFORE THE HORSE:

According to e-mails which were released exclusively to the Washington Post, the Obama administration had tried to rush federal reviewers to approve the loan so Vice President Joe Biden could announce it at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory

This means that the groundbreaking, with Biden literally "shovel-ready" -- holding a shovel in his hands -- was actually scheduled *before* the loan approval was granted. Energy Dept. execs have complained that they were "pressured" to rush the approval process, (Would they have been pressured to rush a denial process? Just askin'... ) and kinda' thought that maybe the approval should have come before the groundbreaking was scheduled, rather than vice versa.

The Administration explained that it was in a hurry to get these jobs created!
(Or maybe in a hurry to get the unemployment numbers down as the 2012 race heats up? Once again, just askin'... but hold that thought, too.)


[5]
On August 31, 2011, Solyndra shut its doors, and employees were told to "pack up their things and leave".

Solyndra filed for bankruptcy on September 6, 2011. See the first paragraph of [4], where Bush's advisers projected that the company would run out of cash in September 2011. Employees received no notice, no severance pay, and not even their accumulated vacation and sick leave pay. Some are filing a class-action lawsuit, alleging deception in that the company constantly reassured them that everything was coming up roses.
(And their words were the "fertilizer". ;) Else, the workers surely would have taken (paid) vacations and sick time while seeking other employment.

Solyndra owes $783.8 million, including loans of $527.8 million to the federal government, according to documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. But if any proceeds are realized from sale of assets, guess who gets paid first? The answer is in the next f/n.


[6]
Before explaining the "restructuring" of the loan, which screwed us taxpayers even more, a brief bit of background. If you already know the meaning of "subordination" as it applies to loans, skip the explanation.

WHAT IS "SUBORDINATION"?

Let's forget these dreary times and go back to Happy Days, when the economy and housing markets were healthy.
Say you bought a home around 1999, financed by a $100,000 mortgage loan at the going rate back then of 8.5%. (for those with the best credit)
Let's also say that you later took out a Home Equity Loan or Line of Credit, for, say, $20,000. Perhaps to add a swimming pool or whatever. The bank who lent you the HEL has a "second mortgage" on your home: If the loans go into default, and the home is sold at auction, the bank with the first mortgage - the $100,000 loan -- gets first crack at the proceeds. Only if there is enough to repay them their principal, back interest, late fees, legal fees for the foreclosure, any property taxes they might have advanced, etc. -- will the 2nd-mtg. holder get anything: whatever is left, up to the amount of *their* judgment. The rule in such cases is, "First in time, first in right". In other words, whoever recorded the lien (mortgage) first has first claim. Still with us?

OK, now it's 2002. Interest rates have fallen to, say, 6%. You say, "Honey, we can refinance the mortgage at the lower rate, and save a couple of hundred dollars per month!" There will be some closing costs, perhaps a couple of thousand dollars, but the savings will make up for that within two years or so, and the next 20-odd years are pure gravy - money back in your pocket. Smart move! (Done by the econo-half of this pair *twice* as rates fell during that period.)

*But* -- when the old 1st mortgage is paid off, the second mortgage - the line of credit or home equity line - would normally "go to the head of the class" - -it now has first priority. Your new bank, who is paying off the $99,000 first mortgage (the principle went down a little as you made the monthly payments), isn't going to like the fact that *they* are in essence making a *second mortgage* loan, and that their priority will be *behind* the Home Equity line.

So they will ask the bank holding the Home Equity line to sign a "subordination" - *agreeing* to keep their lien (claim) *behind* the new first mortgage, despite having recorded their HELOC earlier than the New Bank.

*If* you have been making all payments on both loans faithfully, and in general kept your credit clean, the HELOC bank generally won't have a problem with that, especially if the total debt "in front" of them won't increase. (If you asked New Bank for a $150,000 loan, to get $50,000 "cash out" for whatever reason, HELOC bank will either balk, or require an appraisal of your home, to see if it's worth enough to cover both loans with a comfortable safety margin. But let's skip that, and go with just the same amount, for the lower interest rate.)

*That* is "subordination" -- voluntarily giving up your legal place in line to another creditor (lender).

OK, READY FOR SOLYNDRA AGAIN:

In February of 2011, Solyndra asked the Feds to "restructure" the loan. The details aren't pertinent, except for one thing: By law, such loans from the Energy Dept. *must* have first priority. Yet, in flagrant violation of same, the restructuring *included a subordination of the Fed loan to the new loans from private investors*. Like so:

"Under terms of the February loan restructuring, two private investors — Argonaut Ventures I LLC and Madrone Partners LP — stand to be repaid before the U.S. government if the solar company is liquidated. The two firms gave the company a total of $69 million in emergency loans. The loans are the only portion of their investments that have repayment priority above the U.S. government.

"Argonaut is an investment vehicle of the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa, Okla. The foundation is headed by billionaire George Kaiser, a major Obama campaign contributor and a frequent visitor to the White House. Kaiser raised between $50,000 and $100,000 for Obama's 2008 campaign, federal election records show. Kaiser has made at least 16 visits to the president's aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs."

Seems the subordination should be declared null and void. And the Obama Administration should be declared null and jailed. Might happen. More later.


[7] Their plan was simple: Produce solar panels at a cost of $6, and sell them for $3. As the old (ethnic) joke says, maybe they planned to make it up on volume? (TT: Even FG spotted the flaw in that plan, and without any help at all! Honest!) (ducks flying frying pan)


[8]
The "Green Jobs/Energy" portion of Obama's previous Stimulus Bill included about $38 billion for deals like this one. It is known to have created about 3,500 or so actual seemingly-permanent jobs, at an average cost to the taxpayers of about $10,000,000.00 (ten million dollars) per job created.

The authors, ever eager to be of public service, have agreed to split only one such job among themselves: Pay us each $5 million; we'll quit our current jobs, thus creating two more openings for others; still count ourselves as fully employed; and will enhance the economy by spending most of the money in the US, mainly at its beaches, mountains, 5-star hotels, fine restaurants, etc. And when we do make the occasional side trip to the Caribbean, we promise to fly on a US airline. Or charter a US private jet. ;-D

Hey, our plan eliminates the middleman!


[9]
Old saying: "Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result."

It's widely agreed that Bush's 2008 trillion-dollar bailout was a flop.
It's obvious that Obama's 800-billion dollar Stimulus bill isn't doing squat. ("But things would be worse without it!" Yeah? He sold it with the promise that it would get unemployment down to 8% or less. It didn't. Not even close. IOHO, things would have been *better* without it - this is one example -- but no need to debate that here. It did *not* fix anything, achieve its stated goal, or prevent the poverty rate from rising to the highest level since 1993, as it did in the most recent figures.)

Yet Obama is proposing almost half a trillion in "new" Stimulus, which is basically "same 'ol, same ol' ". Hardly even changed the wrapping. Same s**t, different day. (insert own cliché here.)

Just exactly how ineducable is he? And does he really think that we'll encourage our Congress to vote for it, despite massive (and unprecedented, in TT's feeble memory) TV campaigns urging us to urge our Reps to support it?

Pardon our cynicism, but we see this as yet another purely political ploy. (Does he have any other kind?) Knowing that Congress isn't quite that stupid, especially since Rep. Anthony Weiner's seat, which had been held by the Dems for 90+ years, went to a Republican in a district that voted for Obama by a 4-1 margin in 2008, the plan is: When Congress doesn't pass his bill, he'll campaign in 2012 that the even-worse economy (going out on a limb here) is all Congress's fault - for refusing to vote for the same stupidity for a third time. We'll see how that works out -- if he hasn't been indicted by then. See the next f/n.

Whoa! It looks like we're not such cynics after all!

"The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad," an OMB (Office of Management and Budget) official wrote in a Jan. 31 email to a colleague. "The timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up."

Indeed, it will.

"Questions will be asked as to why the administration made a bad investment, not just once (which could hopefully be explained as part of the challenge of supporting innovative technologies), but twice (which could easily be portrayed as bad judgment, or worse)," the email says.

Indeed, they will, and it was. (We just did.)


[10]
That not-so-magic wand may result in criminal prosecution - as it should.

It was revealed that the Obama administration had already been aware of Solyndra's financial troubles. According to the company's security filings in 2009, the company had been selling its product for less than the cost of production. An Associated Press review of regulatory filings shows that Solyndra was hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars for *years* before the Obama administration signed off on the original $535 million loan guarantee.

Yet in May 2010, the company was personally promoted by President Obama in his visit as a model for government investment in green technology, (If that's the model, we'll pass on the copies, thanks.)

And even in the summer of 2011,

"This July, Solyndra's CEO visited my office as well as other members and talked about the strong demand for the company's products and how 2011 revenues were projected to double from 2010. Now as we all know, less than two months later, the company announced it would file for bankruptcy," committee ranking member Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said in her opening statement at the Congressional hearing. "I'm perplexed how they could be in my office in July, telling me things were looking better and filing for bankruptcy two months later."

Pardon us, Congressperson, but we're not perplexed at all. It's called "lying." Also known as "business as usual in Washington, D. C." .. .Hey, don't knock it! It got the POTUS elected, didn't it?!

Although Solyndra officials had recently pronounced the company financially healthy, at the end of 2010 they had privately confided to Energy Department officials that the company was rapidly going broke and on the verge of shutting down, according to newly released records and interviews. Hence the need for the additional private loan and the "restructuring" disgust in [6]. (TT: Hey, how 'bout that pun on "discussed", huh?! FG: (rolls eyes) See what I have to put up with, people? ;) ... also known as "throwing good money after bad". As every gambler knows, there's a time to cut your losses and run.

Wait, someone else said the same thing:

"If their model was weak to begin with, and then the market gets worse, doesn't that mean that maybe we should have just not thrown good money after bad?" asked Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va.

Maybe this is why: "Solyndra spent nearly $1.9 million on lobbying activities over a period of 43 months from 2008 to 2011."

Yes, they continued to lobby long after the loan was granted, and even as failure was approaching quite obviously.

FINALLY:

Between September 8 and 15, 2011, Solyndra was raided by the FBI in a surprise search. Federal agents also visited the homes of Brian Harrison, the company's CEO, and Chris Gronet, the company's founder, to examine computer files and documents. The U.S. Treasury Department has also launched an investigation, as did a Congressional committee. But:

"On September 14, 2011, executives of Solyndra canceled their scheduled appearance that day before a congressional investigative committee at the last minute, citing the demands of a complicated bankruptcy and a federal investigation they face."

(cough)subpoena(cough) ... Are we so stupid as to believe the execs are handling their bankruptcy themselves,. rather than hiring a law firm, as everyone else does? And that said lawyers couldn't do without them for one day, and that the Feds wouldn't gladly allow them to get their testimony to Congress on record? Jail for contempt, surely.

No one knows where the bottom of this mess will be found. But what's known already should be grounds for numerous criminal indictments, right up to the White House. It would *not* be a first. In the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s, a Cabinet-level officer was sentenced to jail on corruption charges.

But wait! Isn't this the same POTUS who vilified BP, even though the Feds forced them to drill there, and then ignored the revelation that his own overseers failed to exercise oversight, having been bought off by cocaine-and-sex parties? ... People complain that the oil lobby donates too much to Congress and Presidential campaigns. On the contrary, it seems that BP's *real* mistake was not donating *enough*.


[11]
Overall, in the long run, individual investors and private institutions have a fairly good knack for picking winners and losers. Those wealthy capitalists are so greedy and selfish that they are constantly seeking a good return on their capital, and hence, always looking for good opportunities. If they perceive that there is good money to be made in producing solar panels, dog food, or widgets, they will greedily and selfishly invest their *own* money in such ventures, without any guarantees, assistance, or encouragement from Government.

And some of *us* are among those G.S. Capitalists. We don't need to be wealthy to invest in ventures we think will succeed. Thanks to the stock markets, we can buy, say, 100 shares of stock in a company, at, say, $25/share, so that we share in its success (or failure) for only $2500. Your IRA or 401k may do that. Or you, or it, may invest via "mutual funds", which pool dollars from many individual investors to buy a more diversified portfolio of stocks -- sometimes, the entire S&P 500 (largest companies), or sometimes, specializing in one area (tech, gold, Asia, etc. -- the list is endless). Either way, this lets us po' folks participate without having to "put all our eggs in one basket".

Stock prices reflect the perception of a company over time. Rising price = investors think the outlook is rosy. Falling price = (c'mon, figure it out for yourself! ;)

If the free markets aren't willing to supply the capital for a new venture (or expansion of an existing one), it's a fairly good indicator that the proposal isn't such a good idea.

Of course, private investors can be wrong, as in the late-1990s "dot-com bubble". The difference is that when they're wrong, they lose only their *own* money, and *not the taxpayers' money*. See the difference?

Here is the other difference between letting the markets pick which firms get the cash and which don't:
As this case so clearly illustrates,

GOVERNMENT MAKES THESE DECISIONS FOR POLITICAL REASONS, NOT ECONOMIC ONES.

We *think* that everything said above proves that pretty well, and so won't pound that point any further. But if it's not clear, please go ahead and ask questions in your comments.

US Govt. Energy web site describing Solyndra project. Note that 3,000 *temporary* construction jobs were created to build the factory, but "Perm Jobs Created or Saved: N/A". (N/A stands for "Not Any". ;)

US Energy Dept. "gushing" (heh!) press release announcing loan approval two months after Obama's inauguration.

© 2011 Fiddlegirl and Tommy Turtle. All rights reserved. E-mail: tomm...@yahoo.com

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Patrick - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
"Green Fields", at least in its instrumental form, was the love theme from the John Wayne movie "The Alamo". Words were added later for airplay. If an investment were backed by "The Blue Skies of Kansas", those skies would quickly turn grey. Just for laughs, someone ought to ask the President where in the Constitution the federal govt is authorized to "lend" money. Of course, it technically is a loan guarantee, which is actually "borrowing" money. And it is never expected to be repaid, so it is in practical terms, a "grant". They call it a "loan" because government has to turn everything it does into a lie, even when they are not trying to hide something. In the end, until taxes are lowered, and unnecessary regulations are relaxed or abolished, the Chinese will be able to produce solar panels, or anything else cheaper. Obama cannot create jobs by waving his magic wand. At least Bill Clinton could create laughs by waving his.
Old Man Ribber - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
TT and FG - Full of the matchless mirth, regal rhyming, and incredible insights that we have come to love (AND the best footnotes in the business!). Be alert. All posts of this type now count as TWO posts... one post on amiright and a second when it is forwarded to AttackWatch.gov. ;D
AficionaD'oh! - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
A fantastic submission--and talk about a rhyme 'scheme'!! 'Twas *really* (really!) informative, cogent, compelling---and ultimately, depressing as hell. Great choice of OS in that regard. Now, if you don't mind, I think I'll go slit my wrists with shards of shattered solar panel dreams...
Patrick - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
Have you ever heard the theory that petroleum is generated by a continuing catalytic process beneath the Earth's surface and is not the product of dead dinosaurs? I've always wondered how all those critters managed to croak 5 miles under the water 50 miles from New Orleans. Has anyone ever attempted to squash some current megafauna (dead horse, elephant, etc) to see if it would turn into high octane V-8 fodder? Sun is fun, but try to run a flashlight on it. My old Chrysler runs on geothermal power. Don't tell the agency that collects the gasoline taxes.
AFW - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
TT for President..FG for Vice president
Tommy Turtle - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
Patrick: Amen to most of the first paragraph, LOL at the last line! :)

Old Man Ribber: Please forward only the link or URL, along with your comments and recommendation. That way, ChuckyG gets the revenue from page views. (This has nothing to do with our desire to increase our own page views, of course. ;) Not to mention "copyright"... but hey, appreciate the publicity! Thanks for the v/c/s (spreading the word)

AficionaD'oh!: You, me, and probably thousands of other people.... good thing turtles don't have wrists. :) Thanks for a comment far more "enlightening" than what came from that company, or what's come from the White House.

AFW: I'm afraid that FG will find that a bit sexist....;) Oh, heck, it works. She'd be The Power Behind The Throne anyway, like Eleanor Roosevelt or Mrs. Clinton. Thanks for v/c!

Unibomber: Ah, the ultimate compliment - to let us know we've struck a nerve! Our work here is done...

(just out of curiosity, how can *anyone* be in *favor* of what's described above? Just askin'... but somehow, not expecting an answer.)
TT @ Patrick The Movie - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
With all due respect, you've already asked that question at another parody; it was answered; you don't believe in plate tectonics; so there's no point in rehashing it. (Note how neatly the E. side of S. America would fit with the W. side of Africa.)

I'm sure FG would have been much more tactful... ;)
Andy Primus - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
That was an OS that I'd never heard before (& hope never to hear again). Very well paced but I had to play it 4 times because I kept nodding off before the end ;)
I can still remember the buzz of excitement from from you lot when he got elected...didn't last long, did it!
TT - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
Andy Primus: I understand about TOS; see the intro as to why it was thought perfect... and no one is nodding off about this incident, trust me! ;)

Not all of us were so excited. (About 63% of all registered voters didn't vote for him.) Some of us were buzzed, but that's because we hit the bottle upon seeing the election results.

Disillusionment set in quickly for some; others clung stubbornly -- still waiting to hear from Mike P, on this song -- but observe the lack of defenders, other than anonybombers, who don't count.

As noted at our other post, you can get elected on flashy style, but when it turns out there's no substance behind it.... Thanks for v/c.
Christie Marie M - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
Tommy and Fiddle, nice to see you two in this site again for a long time. Yeah, you picked the perfect OS for this timely topic, and it's a reminder of how depressing this economy is. I take the Path train to work and, boy have those fare prices increased greatly! Prolly get broke...unless I look for a new job, but right now I'm happy with where I work. Great as always and hope that $555 would cover other losses, maybe not much, but that is something...
Brain-Dead Turtle @ Andy P (and CMM) - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
That should have been "73%" of registered voters did not vote for Obama. ... Along with the typo on the other post, I think the lesson here is that *maybe*, after doing the research and typing almost 4,000 words of footnotes, one should take a nice, long vacation. Say, a week or so. ... Or at least have submitted the other one first lol.

Christie Marie M: Nice to see you again, too! The $555 million will help very nicely, thank you! ... oh, wait, we're FG./TT, not Solyndra, and neither of us donated to The Anointed One's campaign, so I guess it really is $555. ..... Well, every little bit helps, so, our heartfelt thanks as always!
Old Man Ribber - September 20, 2011 - Report this comment
TT and FG - Was this AfficinaD'oh satirizing my commentary? If so, he sure has set his bar low! ;D
Conspiracy You Say? - September 21, 2011 - Report this comment
There's more than one way to kill a cat. Seeing how important this is for Obama I wouldn't be surprised to learn in ten years that it was the GOP who undermined Solyndra, it's easy enough to do I guess by putting pressure on subcontractors to fail deliverances and/or raise prizes and/or pay off potential costumers and/or have someone leaking solvency info from the inside and/or prepare a smear campaign for the bankrupcy situation (we're three weeks down from Aug 31 and already all this info is out, like a script - it took years to have nearly the same inside info on say Enron for one).
Tommy Turtle - September 21, 2011 - Report this comment
Old Man Ribber: Not at all! ... where did that come from? AD was enthused, too. I'll e-mail you. Unfortunately, it seems there's someone even more paranoid that yourself, right below you. ;D

Conspiracy You Say?: First, get help.
Obviously, you haven't read all the footnotes, esp. the one where it was known *to Obama from the beginning* that the company was long-since gone bad:
"An Associated Press review of regulatory filings shows that Solyndra was hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars for *years* before the Obama administration signed off on the original $535 million loan guarantee."

Forget the rest: the fund-raising correlating with the loan guarantee, and Obama touting it proudly in 2010 even as he knew it wasn't going well. The reason that it took a long time to find out about Enron (which happened on Clinton's watch) is that Enron and its auditors lied. The reason that it took "us* so long to find out about Solyndra is that Obama lied.

Please read it all, and if you still see some conspiracy to crush a bad plan, please get help.

Didn't put this in the footnotes, because they were long enough already, but when TT had his first house built, in the mid-1970s, he had a solar water heater put in. Simple metal tray on the roof, painted black, with copper tubing and water running through it, and covered in clear glass. Cost $900 at the time, estimated savings of $25 month on shower, dishwasher, clothes washer, which is a "three-year payback" (savings paid for it in three years), or a 33.3 % annual return on investment. And saved on oil or whatever the power co. used to make electricity.

The idea came from TT's grandparents' house, which was built in the 1920s or so. I've seen entire *houses* in New Mexico solarly heated all winter, just by making the south-facing wall of solid glass. Anyone who lives in roughly the southern half of the US, and probably some to the north of that, could benefit from these. Have you? How many have? We're rushing into technologies that simply aren't cost-effective for us yet, while we haven't even scratched the surface of using low-tech stuff. Maybe that's why the idea failed, rather than a GOP conspiracy?

btw, while I'm not a Republican, you're the first GOP-auto-knocker I've seen who gives them credit for enough brains to pull off such a giant conspiracy. ;D ... Also, they said the same thing about the demise of the Los Angeles streetcar trolleys - conspiracy by the auto and oil co's - when the plain fact is that after WWII, autos were affordable, and people just prefer to get in their own car and drive.

btw, do you have a real name here, or just another of the many Anonymous Cowards? In any case, sleep well, but watch out for those monsters under the bed....
THIS JUST IN: Solyndra Takes The Fifth (Hey, that's *mine*, says FG ;) - September 21, 2011 - Report this comment
http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddwoody/2011/09/20/solyndra-executives-to-plead-the-fifth-at-congressional-hearing/

"Solyndra’s chief executive and chief financial officer will invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when they appear before a Congressional committee Friday, the beleaguered Silicon Valley solar company said.

“Due to the ongoing Department of Justice investigation and on the advice of their counsel, they will be unable to provide substantive answers to the Subcommittee’s questions and that present circumstances require both gentlemen to exercise their Fifth Amendment rights in the face of questioning that might occur,” Solyndra said in a statement emailed to reporters Tuesday afternoon."
****************************

Of course, if they are charged with a criminal offense(s), they are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. And there, too, they have an absolute right to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights against saying anything that could possibly indicate their guilt -- or anything at all.

And because we're not those jurors (I wish! - TT), we have the absolute right to wonder why they don't even care to deny these scurrilous, false, and libelous charges.

Or for that matter, why they don't reveal the GOP conspiracy against them that was cited by "Conspiracy You Say?" a few posts above? ;-D

Swamped - September 23, 2011 - Report this comment
After Democrats took total control in Jan. 2009, Nancy Pelosi said "We are going to drain the swamp", referring to the the Bush/Cheney administration. To bad they filled the swamp with raw sewage, toxic waste, and socialist sludge. The name of the new swamp? "Hope and Change".
Tommy Turtle - September 23, 2011 - Report this comment
Swamped: ROFLMAO! .... Polls and the stock market indicate that people are giving up hope, and that the change was for the worse. Thanks for the visit, vote, and comment.
THIS JUST IN: Another half-billion bites the dust - October 21, 2011 - Report this comment
"With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.

"Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job of assembling the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car has been outsourced to Finland."

http://news.yahoo.com/car-company-gets-u-loan-builds-cars-finland-172441546.html

Are you angry? I'm angry.
Will this unproductive "green deals" nonsense of handing out *our* money ever end? That depends on how you vote in 2012.
Now This Second "Green Deal" Heads For Bankruptcy - April 24, 2013 - Report this comment
http://news.yahoo.com/floundering-fisker-faces-grilling-over-government-loan-181203884.html

"Taxpayer-backed funds kept flowing to electric carmaker Fisker Automotive months after the company failed to meet key production benchmarks, lawmakers said at a congressional hearing on Wednesday. ... Department of Energy documents as showing Fisker got $32 million in payments, even after it failed to launch its Karma vehicle in February of 2011.

"The committee hearing focused on the DOE's decision in 2009 to grant the company a $529 million loan only to see it veer toward bankruptcy - a chain of events with echoes of Solyndra, the government-backed solar manufacturer that went out of business in 2011. Fisker's troubles are the latest in a string of green automotive technology flops, including last year's bankruptcy of its lithium-ion battery supplier, A123 Systems.

"The automaker verges on collapse. Among the questions still outstanding is whether Fisker's prospects were ever strong enough to warrant the DOE's backing, which helped trigger a flood of private financing for Fisker.... Fisker's failure to make a payment on the DOE loan on Monday was the latest of its troubles. In recent weeks, Fisker has fired 75 percent of its workforce and hired bankruptcy advisers.

"Fisker tapped $192 million of its $529 million before the DOE quietly decided to freeze Fisker's credit line in June 2011. Neither the DOE nor Fisker publicly disclosed that decision until early 2012. Lawyers and a DOE official said the department was not obligated to divulge the decision."

Of course they weren't obligated. All that we taxpayers did was to provide the money. Why should we expect them to divulge any indications of failure? The new "Transparency in Government" marches on ... :P

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