“Green” Business As Usual
Lying to prospective investors to get funding. Intentional sale of defective products. Apparent political influence used to get Federal loan guarantees. Business failure followed by bankruptcy.
Allow me to present Solyndra, Part III – AKA Abound Solar of Longmont, Colorado.
They received $400M in loan guarantees from the Federal government in December 2010. They received – and appear to have spent – $70M in taxpayer funds. And they started producing solar panels.
The panels didn’t work worth a damn, but the sold them anyway. Otherwise, they’d miss required benchmarks necessary to get more guaranteed loans.
They still went belly-up. They filed for bankruptcy in June of this year.
And now they’re under investigation by local authorities for investment fraud. Deliberately misleading prospective investors is considered a crime in Colorado.
More details can be found here. They ain’t pretty.
We’ve seen a number of cases similar to this already in the “green energy” sector. So I think we can say this one looks like just another example “business as usual” for one of this Administration’s pet “green energy” firms.
Given their track record to date, I think it’s time for the Federal government to quit meddling in this field. They should quit trying to pick winners and losers and leave that type of business to those who know what the hell they’re doing.
Mitt Romney said at first debate “Obama doesn’t pick winners and losers – he just picks losers”. Some more from folks at Divided States below…
Solyndra – fail
Abound Solar – fail
Solar Trust of America – fail
Amonix Solar – fail
Bright Source -fail
LSP Energy – fail
Energy Conversion Devices – fail
SunPower – fail
Beacon Power – fail
Ecotality – fail
A123 Solar – fail
UniSolar – fail
Azure Dynamics – fail
Evergreen Solar – fail
Ener1 – fail
Thanks, Devtun. Keep the list updated.
[…] This ain’t Hell… covers green business as usual […]
The SBA gives out loans but dayum…even they have standards.
It’s all “payoffs” for campaign contributions. Committed by fraud. With our tax dollars (that aren’t worth a dime anymore).
All in violation of US law, or what would apply to any of us were we to try it as individuals. Having politicians making the choices makes the decisions to pick winners and losers no less immoral/wrong/illegal/contemptuous.
Why is it again that if the government does it that it is OK but when Al Capone et al did it it was wrong??
I read a quote from a whistle blower in this case. He said “our panels were bad and everyone knew it. The were fine unless we put them out in the sun. Then they would catch on fire.” Aside from having a burning solar panel on your roof, what could go wrong? The fact that management knew it was building a defective product is prima facia evidence of fraud. I say seize all of their assets and sell their wives and children into slavery.
Instead on handing out tax dollars to companies to invent something, give tax breaks and incentives to companies that can show they have a valid product. If the Marine Corps worked that way we’d be paying 10,000 enlistment bonuses before people went to boot camp, have thousands of terds sign up, never graduate boot camp and laugh all the way to the bank.
Roger in Republic: I think I can buy all of your recommendation except that last part. The 13th Amendment kinda makes that difficult.
Replace “sell their wives and children . . . ” with “send them to the Aleutians to live in a pup tent” and I’m happy.
[…] Unlike some “green” firms, this factory actually could produce a useable product. The pilot run for the plant produced battery cells that actually performed quite well. The production process was sound, and the resulting battery cells would have been useful and salable. Everything was “good to go” for start-up. […]