Solyndra-Gate

tivo

tivo

CAGiversary!
Over half a billion taxpayer dollars wasted.....

[youtube]dyxLZwq0b2Q[/youtube]


The Cliffnotes: A solar panel manufacturing company that received $535 million dollars in federal "stimulus" loan guarantees from the Obama administration in 2009 has filed for bankruptcy and laid off all of its 1,100 employees. Auditors found significant financial troubles with the company before the award. Other outside reviewers used to vet such deals were not considered as the loan was "fast tracked" so that Joe Biden could announce the award at the groundbreaking of the solar company's factory in September 2009. There is speculation that big time Obama donors and bundlers have a financial interest in Solyndra including Fred Hochberg, The Export-Import Bank’s president and chairman, who bundle an estimated $100,000 for Obama's campaign. The company headquarters and the homes of senior executives were raided by the FBI last week as part of a Department of Energy investigation into the loan.



At the very least, it was a dubious loan made worse by ignoring safegurads at a time when disregard for taxpayer dollars cannot be tolerated. Worse would show it as putting the welfare of donors above that of taxpayers. We'll see what comes....
 
Obligatory:
dwZ10.jpg
 
This is probably as bad as Rick Perry's pay to play scheme while he's been Governor.

I agree it's a half billion wasted. Where were you protesting a trillion in Iraq? Why didn't you also protest no bid contracts which by nature are anti-competitive, anti-free market, and picks 'winners and losers'?
 
The Bad:
==========
Obviously the vetting sucked.
Accounting protocols were not sufficient or sufficiently followed.
We're on the hook for a half bil loan.

The Good:
===========
This loan represents 1.3% of all DOE loans made for this purpose.
This is the only currently nonperforming loan in the portfolio.
A 1.3% nonperformance rate on a $50 bil program would get any banker in the world promoted to CEO.

The WTF:
===========
The FBI raids are apparently in conjunction with debt seniority. A private entity is claiming debt seniority over the feds, which is crazy talk. It appears Solyndra made a seniority guarantee to an entity after guaranteeing it to the feds (which is a condition of the program, which is the "right thing to do" for the government). Someone is lying and their asses need to be hauled into court.
 
[quote name='UncleBob']Move along, nothing to see here... everyone does it... he's better than the other guy who does it...[/QUOTE]
I'm always enriched by your posts Bob. Great work as always.

Anywho.

There are questions of who did what to whom and when. There is an aspect to this that has not yet (to my knowledge) been discussed in the media.

On July 29, 2011 (just five-weeks before going bankrupt) Solyndra (“SOL”) entered into a transaction whereby it sold both the Accounts Receivables (IOUs from panels sold) and the Inventory (panels) of the company ("the A/R Transaction”). Solyndra Financial (“SOLF”) (a subsidiary of SOL) was the seller. The purchaser was a newly formed company called Solyndra Solar II LLC (“SSII”). The following is the only information that I could find about SSII. Note that the company was organized in the Sate of Delaware one-day before the sale of significant assets of SOL.
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Translation: A company was created and the next day bought the receivables (the money owed to Solyndra) and the current inventory (everything they hadn't shipped). Strange.

Again, both receivables and inventory were sold. A question is, “Was this a material transaction?” The court docs suggest there is real money involved. As of September 2, 2011, there was approximately $3,866,342.83 in Inventory Accounts Receivable Trust Funds being held in the Inventory AIR Purchaser Trust Accounts. There was nearly $4mm of cash in the account! There are, no doubt, other receivables to come in the future. Clearly the sale of receivables was material.

I have no information from public documents regarding the scope of the sale of inventory. I have information from a former Solyndra employee (Yes, this person will remain anonymous). I believe that the following is factual. A third party confirmation of this is required. (Love to hear from you). With that said:
It seemed like the company had been hoarding panels in the last month. We were producing a great deal of material, but holding off on shipments. We were stacking up panels everywhere. Our old building was packed with them, but we had some huge orders in the works. Usually we shipped most of the material in the last week of the quarter, so this was not completely unusual.
We had close to three months worth of panels and we were on track to sell about two hundred million this year. That works out to about fifty million in inventory.
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Translation: The receivables (AR) had $4 mil in it + was worth all outstanding payments. Anon says they had ~$50 mil in inventory. So Solyndra sold the valuable part of itself to someone. But who?

So in a sale you typically have an agent who works on your behalf. This newly formed buying company had a company named Argonaut as its agent.

So all that happens. Then the roof falls in at Solyndra and bankruptcy proceeds. Argonaut jumps in:
Argonaut (GK) has separately offered to provide a post bankruptcy loan of $4mm ("DIP"). There are many terms required by Argonaut. One requirement relates to the A/R sales. From the docs:
It is a condition to funding under the DIP Facility that the Inventory Accounts Receivable Trust Funds being held in the Inventory A/R Purchaser Trust Accounts are released to Argonaut Solar, LLC, as agent for the Inventory A/R Purchasers. Argonaut's (very good) lawyers make their position very clear as to who owns the assets in the A/R accounts. The Purchased Inventory (including any proceeds thereof) and the Inventory Accounts Receivable Trust Funds (including any proceeds thereof) are property of the Inventory AIR Purchasers and not property of the Debtors’ estates.
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Translation: Argonauts lawyers say that they will give a bankruptcy loan of $4 mil if the original Solyndra-selling-to-new-company transaction is not voided by the bankruptcy judge. And if that original sale is upheld, Argonaut gets the $4 mil AR account and *someone* (whoever this new company is that bought the AR and inventory) gets the inventory. The people that are owed money get to fight over virtually nothing.

I have no idea wtf is going on here, but it looks like straight up theft. "They" realized the company was going to eat it and offloading the valuable parts to a shell company so the bankruptcy wouldn't be able to touch the assets. Same shit as when someone puts their car/house/whatever in someone's else name when they declare bankruptcy. Whoever did it probably had no idea that there would be such heavy scrutiny on the deal since who really gives a shit when a company goes under?
 
[quote name='speedracer']I'm always enriched by your posts Bob. Great work as always. [/QUOTE]

I like how you single me out by name, but completely ignore the previous posters who added about as much as I did to the thread (or less, in one particular case).

This is an interesting situation (and I've not seen much mentioned of the fact that it started under Bush II and continued under Bush III Obama) - but everyone here seemed more interested in shrugging it off as Washington business as usual, so who am I to argue?
 
[quote name='UncleBob']This is an interesting situation (and I've not seen much mentioned of the fact that it started under Bush II and continued under Bush III Obama) - but everyone here seemed more interested in shrugging it off as Washington business as usual, so who am I to argue? [/QUOTE]

Supposedly it didn't 'start' under Bush, but the application and such was filed during that time, but they never received any money...until the stimulus and Obumer appeared in 2009. And, cause and effect, people in the Obama WH pushed it through.
 
Dear speed,

I know you are busy what with the trolls and the edumacating the rest of us. But could you explain just how this was the fault of Obama or the feds like tivo and the tivettes implied? I am not seeing a lot of there, there.
 
[quote name='Msut77']Dear speed,

I know you are busy what with the trolls and the edumacating the rest of us. But could you explain just how this was the fault of Obama or the feds like tivo and the tivettes implied? I am not seeing a lot of there, there.[/QUOTE]
As a guarantor, you have a fiduciary duty to do due diligence. In a mythical free market, you would have someone that fully understood both the scientific (in this case) and business implications of the business being loaned to (a guarantee is basically the same thing). Obviously that doesn't happen in the real world, whether in government or private capital markets or you would never have businesses that have gotten loans fail for any reason other than catastrophe.

The DOE's task is not only to find emergent technologies and fund them, but to meet the fiduciary duty bar. It's really high and an army of lawyers fight this battle every day in court. Every time you hear someone say "nobody could have known", they're fighting the due diligence battle.

Anyway, the bar was clearly not met here. At first glance and based only on the limited info I've seen, it appears Solyndra overstated either their future income or their technology potential. The first makes them possibly criminals and the second makes them bad business people.

If I was swinging the stick at Obama and DOE, that's the biggest stick I can think of. That someone should have known, though how exactly, what that smoking gun piece of knowledge is that should have moved Solyndra from quality investment to undeserving hasn't been announced/unearthed. There are emails saying someone doesn't like this or that but shit man, it's reality. I've been private and government and I don't think I've ever seen a project I thought had the upside that the business side said it did.

If the total investment portfolio looked like shit (say >15% default), I'd say Obama has some shit to answer for. But this is one investment. When your portfolio underperforms, you need to get your shit together. But this is 1.3% and you can bet the rest are getting really hard looks right now.

One last note: governments everywhere give major handouts to companies all the friggin time in the form of guarantees and tax breaks. States give out hundreds of millions in breaks to individual companies all the time. We grumble about it when we disagree with the aim, but at least we're talking about a specific policy aim (in this case, solar tech). Slush funds are WAAAAAAAAAY fucking worse and nobody ever seems to talk about those anymore.

I can think of a certain governor running for president that had a $100 million+ slush fund and nobody has said a word.
 
Say what you will about China. But they subsidize the hell out of solar power. Also when some company pulls something like this a few execs get a blindfold and a little drive out to the countryside.
 
The too long didn't read version of what happened in speedy's story:
Enron Part II

Reason for Limbaugh based anger:
It isn't oil and also LIBERALS DID THIS!

Sweet Delicious Irony:
Goofy neocons think Sarbanes Oxley kills jobs, S-OX is what will send somebody in the transactional end of this whole ordeal up shit creek.

p.s.
my first job out of school with an accounting degree was as a SOX Auditor with a contractor that suddenly needed a couple hundred accountants. Job killer my ass
 
[quote name='nasum']The too long didn't read version of what happened in speedy's story:
Enron Part II[/quote]
I almost put tl;dr enron. haha.
Reason for Limbaugh based anger:
It isn't oil and also LIBERALS DID THIS!
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That seems to be about the whole of it. The only thing interesting about it is that Obama has some form of a connection.
p.s.
my first job out of school with an accounting degree was as a SOX Auditor with a contractor that suddenly needed a couple hundred accountants. Job killer my ass
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My accountant father in law calls SOX the Accountant Full Employment Act.
 
[quote name='IRHari']Supposedly it didn't 'start' under Bush, but the application and such was filed during that time, but they never received any money...until the stimulus and Obumer appeared in 2009. And, cause and effect, people in the Obama WH pushed it through.[/QUOTE]

What I've read was that the program was pretty fast-tracked for approval shortly before Obama was elected. If I was a tin-foil hat conspiracy nut, I'd be wondering if someone in the Bush administration hadn't set this up, knowing that Obama would grandstand such a thing only to have it blow up in his face.

[quote name='speedracer']If I was swinging the stick at Obama and DOE, that's the biggest stick I can think of.[/QUOTE]

Of course, there are other details related to this story. Which I didn't see anywhere in your mostly detailed post.
 
[quote name='speedracer']I almost put tl;dr enron. haha.[/QUOTE]

Not convinced of that.

From what I've read Enron's mark-to-market was a different beast, it was creating value out of whole cloth - this is more like classic bankruptcy fraud. In other words the tldr is more like Orange County Choppers

Great analysis Speed (as always)
 
[quote name='camoor']Not convinced of that.

From what I've read Enron's mark-to-market was a different beast, it was creating value out of whole cloth - this is more like classic bankruptcy fraud. In other words the tldr is more like Orange County Choppers

Great analysis Speed (as always)[/QUOTE]

+1 Upon further reading, Solyndra had a pretty solid business model until Chinese companies dropped the bottom out of the market.
 
So clean energy can be corporate evil now? I like it.
 
[quote name='Msut77']+1 Upon further reading, Solyndra had a pretty solid business model until Chinese companies dropped the bottom out of the market.[/QUOTE]
But that's not the whole interest for the DOE. They want to push emergent tech as well so the business case isn't as important, though it still is. So as much as people are making about it, this would be a win for the DOE if Solyndra was able to put together something new and valuable before they crashed.

I don't know if they did.

There are some possibly nasty things in Bob's link.
The Obama administration restructured a half-billion dollar federal loan to a troubled solar energy company in such a way that private investors — including a fundraiser for President Barack Obama — moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default, government records show.
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If the people that did the restructured loan end up with a fat profit (the loan < accounts receivable + inventory on hand), then whoever made that decision for the government should be marched up the hill to explain why. Anyone lower than Chu and I'd just fire them straight away.

But that BI article I quoted yesterday said there was ~$55 million total (~$4mil AR and ~$50mil inventory) and only mentioned a $4mil bridge loan. Bob's article says the emergency loan was for $69 million. So it doesn't look like there will be a fat profit there. In fact it looks like a healthy loss, though I'm sure they'll find some way to cover. But that totally changes the game. Now it makes sense to form a company to hold your assets in escrow. The whole story I posted yesterday stops being criminal and starts being good business if Bob's link's loan amount is right.

One more note from Bob's link:
Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said Friday that the company's financial losses were not uncommon for a high-tech startup and were a major reason Solyndra applied for the federal loan. The loan program is intended to help promising companies that cannot receive financing through private banks because of high risk.
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Uhhhh, yea. It's juuuuuuuuust a little disingenuous to get all crazy about a loan program targeting high risk pools that has a default.
"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. "Because now we're in a worse position in the bankruptcy courts to get our money back."
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Well Rep. Griffith, they would have sold their inventory before declaring bankruptcy and used the money to extend operations. So actually what the DOE did was convince someone else to throw in good money. Giving up seniority in debt positioning isn't a problem WHEN THERE'S NO MONEY TO GET DUMBASS.

And the rest sounds like politics.

This thing turns on whether the guys that make the loan make a shit ton of money. If they loan $70mil and walk away with $100mi+, yea, someone needs to get fired. Otherwise this is much ado about nothing. Crony capitalism doesn't work unless people are getting paid. If I was trying to hook up a contributor, I sure as fuck wouldn't leave it up to a bankruptcy judge to decide.
[quote name='UncleBob']Of course, there are other details related to this story. Which I didn't see anywhere in your mostly detailed post.[/QUOTE]
I hadn't seen anything like that at all.
 
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I know it's bullshit when people let politicians off the hook when they screw up by saying it's just politics without at least some sort of evidence. It pisses me off when other people do it.

The chairman of the committee going after the loan program is Fred Upton, R-Michigan.
“In this time of record debt, I question whether the government is qualified to act as a venture capitalist, picking winners and losers in speculative ventures and shelling out billions of taxpayer dollars to keep them afloat.”
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Of course he hated it so much he pushed an amendment to add $4 billion to the program and to earmark it specifically for his district:
H.AMDT.328 (A013)
Amends: H.R.2641
Sponsor: Rep Upton, Fred [MI-6]
AMENDMENT PURPOSE:
An amendment numbered 10 printed in the Congressional Record to increase the amount available for Title 17 Innovative Technology Loan Guarantee Program by $4 billion, and to specify that that amount be available for advanced nuclear energy facilities.
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And he absolutely hates government spending:
Voted YES on $2 billion more for Cash for Clunkers program.
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Oh, and he's one of the point men for keeping Big Oil subsidies going.
The energy industry is opening their wallets for Upton — in the second quarter of 2011 alone, Upton raised $104,000 in campaign contributions from oil, gas and coal — and its not even an election year.

This may seem like a lot of money, until you consider the return on Big Oil’s investment. The oil industry has spent roughly $280,000 to back Upton and $4 billion is the low end of credible estimates of the value of their subsidies.
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But it's unfair to pin this on one guy, even if it's the head of the investigative committee. So here's Republican Majority Leader McConnell begging for money from the program:
Mr. McConnell made two personal appeals in 2009, asking Energy Secretary Steven Chu to approve as much as $235 million in federal loans for a plant to build electric vehicles in Franklin, Ky.
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And Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, who's screaming about how shitty this program is:
In 2009, [Rep Lamar] Smith wrote to Mr. Chu asking him to approve loan guarantees from stimulus money for a Texas project proposed by Tessera Solar, documents show.
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And more and more:
Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan and another critic of the Energy Department program, signed letters along with other members of the Michigan delegation in 2009 and 2010, pushing at least five clean-energy projects in his state, including a $207 million loan request from EcoMotors International. And Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida, praised the opening last year of a lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant in his state, which relied upon an Energy Department grant.
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...
“We can’t afford any more crony capitalism,” Vitter said in Wednesday.
...
For example, on July 1, 2009, Vitter and Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana wrote Energy Secretary Steven Chu to support a loan application by the V Vehicle Company, a clean-car start-up (backed by T. Boone Pickens and the venture capital leviathan Kleiner Perkins) that was planning a Louisiana factory. “This vehicle would serve as a catalyst for job creation,” they wrote. A year later, Vitter joined the entire Louisiana delegation in another letter pushing “expedited consideration” for VVC. Alas, the Energy Department rejected the loan, citing concerns about the company’s financial viability. Vitter must have been annoyed by all this due diligence, because in December 2010–after VVC changed its name to Next Autoworks–he, Landrieu and Congressman Rodney Alexander tried once more. “Every day that Next Autoworks’ application is delayed is another day that workers cannot be hired,” the wrote.
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Well imagine that! It's ok for you to do it but it's not ok for the other side to do it. Has that not basically been the problem for the last 40 years?

Then again, bonus points for (R) anti-green/pro-green hypocricy as that's always entertaining.
 
[quote name='camoor']Not convinced of that.[/quote]

Seconded.

From what I've read Enron's mark-to-market was a different beast, it was creating value out of whole cloth
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My understanding of mark-to-market is that they lied like a motherfucker on their balance books by being able to claim revenue from into-the-infinite future as current assets.

e.g., I have an upstart with $500 trillion in assets, based on sales of $1 per year for the next 500 trillion years.

More sensible than that, of course, but by no means "whole cloth." Add to that the volatile nature of energy prices as a commodity (i.e., why it's not included in core inflation measures), and you ultimately have a scenario where mark-to-market can't be used without discovering that, wholesale, shit just be made up.
 
[quote name='nasum']Well imagine that! It's ok for you to do it but it's not ok for the other side to do it. Has that not basically been the problem for the last 40 years?

Then again, bonus points for (R) anti-green/pro-green hypocricy as that's always entertaining.[/QUOTE]
I don't think it's hypocrisy on the part of the Dems because clean energy subsidies has always been a stated goal.
 
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/09/27/business-us-corbett-biofuels-pennsylvania_8703826.html

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. -- Gov. Tom Corbett traveled to suburban Philadelphia on Tuesday to welcome a biomass energy company that plans to move its headquarters from Georgia and create 150 jobs over the next three years as it tries to develop ways to turn products such as wood and waste into fuel.
...
If Renmatix creates the number of jobs anticipated, the company will receive a total of $1.9 million in loans, tax credits and grants for the project, said Steve Kratz, a spokesman for the Department of Community and Economic Development.
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But it's just liberals who don't appreciate the free market and get government involved in picking winners and losers.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Seconded.



My understanding of mark-to-market is that they lied like a motherfucker on their balance books by being able to claim revenue from into-the-infinite future as current assets.

e.g., I have an upstart with $500 trillion in assets, based on sales of $1 per year for the next 500 trillion years.

More sensible than that, of course, but by no means "whole cloth." Add to that the volatile nature of energy prices as a commodity (i.e., why it's not included in core inflation measures), and you ultimately have a scenario where mark-to-market can't be used without discovering that, wholesale, shit just be made up.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, my explanation was off, thx for clarifying.
 
[quote name='speedracer']One last note: governments everywhere give major handouts to companies all the friggin time in the form of guarantees and tax breaks. States give out hundreds of millions in breaks to individual companies all the time. We grumble about it when we disagree with the aim, but at least we're talking about a specific policy aim (in this case, solar tech). Slush funds are WAAAAAAAAAY fucking worse and nobody ever seems to talk about those anymore.

I can think of a certain governor running for president that had a $100 million+ slush fund and nobody has said a word.[/QUOTE]
For some reason all the libs from Texas have been quiet as door mice about that last line I posted there. It looks like an outsider finally noticed. From The New Republic:
Perry can point to one area, however, where he took direct action to create jobs: the two economic development funds he established. Most states use incentives to lure companies, but few toss out as much public money or do so with as little oversight as Texas. There is the Enterprise Fund, which Perry created with money from the state’s rainy day fund in 2003 to serve as a “deal-closing” mechanism for companies considering moving to Texas. And there is the Emerging Technology Fund, created two years later as a sort of venture-capital fund for Texas start-ups. Awards from both funds require only the approval of Perry, the lieutenant governor, and the House speaker; for the technology fund, Perry added a 17-member advisory council, appointed by him.

Together, the funds have distributed more than $800 million.
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$50 million went here:
In 2008, it was the subject of a scathing audit, and, in early 2009, the university’s president, Elsa Murano, declared that A&M was spending $2 million per year “to help TIGM continue to operate in spite of heavy financial losses.” A few months later, amid a growing dispute over the institute and other research funding, the Perry-appointed board of regents forced Murano to resign.
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Perry said it would create 5,000 jobs. It created 10.

Another $50 mil:
In 2009, Perry announced another $50 million grant, this time from the tech fund, to create the National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing, which would seek to turn A&M into a hub of vaccine development. A year earlier, the A&M system had entered into an agreement to develop vaccines with a therapeutics manufacturing firm called Introgen; this put the firm in a position to benefit from the new center. Introgen’s founder, David Nance, is a close friend of Perry’s. He contributed $100,000 to Perry over the decade, he had previously served on the advisory committee of the tech fund awarding the $50 million, and Perry’s son, Griffin, owned Introgen stock between 2001 and 2004.

Introgen had its main drug rejected by the FDA and declared bankruptcy shortly before the $50 million award, but Nance continued to do well by the state. In 2010, the tech fund awarded $4.5 million to his next venture, Convergen, even after a review panel rejected the application. The fund paid Nance’s daughter $70,000 for promotional work, and several fund employees went to work with Nance. Perry also provided $1.9 million in federal funds to a separate Nance venture, Innovate Texas, founded in 2008 as a sort of clearinghouse for Texas tech firms. The outfit paid Nance a six-figure salary. It is now defunct. I was unable to find any trace of Nance—his name is still on the directory at his gated community outside Austin, but the line has gone dead.
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Whoops. That ladies and gentlemen, is pure unadulterated graft.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics...u=YzQxZTFjNWFhYzQ2Njk4NDYyZWRmYjdkYzE3YTE3NmM

I'm willing to bet money the Dem party has been sitting on this info, praying it didn't make a splash before the general if Perry gets the nomination.

Point being you can say a lot of shit about Solyndra. Incompetent oversight and decision making in the loan guarantee process. Ok. But a straight up slush fund is so much worse. Obama's DOE was stupid, but it didn't border on theft.

And where did Perry get the money for his slush funds? From the rainy day fund, to be used if Texas goes into the red. Fail on so very many levels.
 
[quote name='speedracer']I don't think it's hypocrisy on the part of the Dems because clean energy subsidies has always been a stated goal.[/QUOTE]

I think you misunderstood.
It's hypocricy by the GOP to cry out against this kind of stuff when they do it all the time with significantly worse results more often than not (see Savings & Loan disaster, deregulation leading to housing market collapse while making a few people extraordinarily wealthy along the way, then going ahead and giving the same banks that effed up a whole bunch of govt money for a reason never actually explained, then calling the lady that does the oversight of all of that money a bitch {Warren} because they don't like that she figures out that it's all graft etc...)
It's even more delicious when the same GOP knuckleheads will pull whatever pork out of whatever bill they possibly can, even if it's for "green" purposes, if it gets some money in their district.

It's the same thing with that Anthony Weiner guy. Didn't we see some (R) dude sending shirtless photos to a chick on craigslist a month or three before that in the laugh at republicans thread? Was he forced to resign? Do we even remember his name?

The hypocrisy of it all makes me bitter and tends to overshadow the schadenfreude as well as the ironic humour sometimes found in the whole operation.
 
I thought "look at what the other guys do" isn't considered a valid part of the discussion when talking about a crooked politician...
 
[quote name='UncleBob']I thought "look at what the other guys do" isn't considered a valid part of the discussion when talking about a crooked politician...[/QUOTE]

Of course it is.

One of the problems with your deeply deeply flawed political perspective is that you argue everything from a standpoint of absolute principle, with the assumption that every politician should be as pure as the driven snow.

I hate to burst your bubble but this ain't never going to happen. Simply put, we have to do the best we can with what we got. Speaking for myself, I'd rather see our law enforcement and media go after the big fish, the really rotten players, then to waste time trying to score political points over penny-ante chickenshit.
 
[quote name='camoor']Speaking for myself, I'd rather see our law enforcement and media go after the big fish, the really rotten players, then to waste time trying to score political points over penny-ante chickenshit.[/QUOTE]

So why are you focusing on some governor's $100+ Million Slush Fund vs. the most powerful man in the free world's $500+ Million favor to his political donors?
 
[quote name='UncleBob']So why are you focusing on some governor's $100+ Million Slush Fund vs. the most powerful man in the free world's $500+ Million favor to his political donors?[/QUOTE]

peter-griffin-jako-che-guevara.jpg
 
[quote name='UncleBob']I thought "look at what the other guys do" isn't considered a valid part of the discussion when talking about a crooked politician...[/QUOTE]
Well I don't think they're the same thing and I think people are trying to make it the same thing, so I tried to explain the difference.

Solyndra had a business plan and a product that it manufactured tens of millions of dollars worth. The administration failed to properly vet, but that's not a shortcoming worth summary execution when the other 98.4% of the total investment portfolio is performing. Solyndra just didn't have the breakthrough it thought it had and paired with a flood of cheaper, comparable materials, they lost the market fight.

By contrast, Rick Perry raided the Texas surplus fund and quite literally handed it to his cronies who turned around and produced just this side of absolutely nothing, burning through tens of millions of dollars in the process.

One of these things deserves a "well that was stupid" and one of these deserves a federal investigation. Of course based on the outcome, you'd be absolutely wrong if you went with common sense to decide which was which.
 
[quote name='speedracer']Well I don't think they're the same thing and I think people are trying to make it the same thing, so I tried to explain the difference.

Solyndra had a business plan and a product that it manufactured tens of millions of dollars worth. The administration failed to properly vet, but that's not a shortcoming worth summary execution when the other 98.4% of the total investment portfolio is performing. Solyndra just didn't have the breakthrough it thought it had and paired with a flood of cheaper, comparable materials, they lost the market fight.

By contrast, Rick Perry raided the Texas surplus fund and quite literally handed it to his cronies who turned around and produced just this side of absolutely nothing, burning through tens of millions of dollars in the process.

One of these things deserves a "well that was stupid" and one of these deserves a federal investigation. Of course based on the outcome, you'd be absolutely wrong if you went with common sense to decide which was which.[/QUOTE]

IAWTC (aka what speed said)
 
[quote name='speedracer']Solyndra had a business plan and a product that it manufactured tens of millions of dollars worth. The administration failed to properly vet, but that's not a shortcoming worth summary execution when the other 98.4% of the total investment portfolio is performing.[/QUOTE]

I'd agree - if it weren't for the fact that the administration did "properly vet" Solyndra. Had the company set to fail in the exact month it ended up failing. After all that, they still loaned the money. To people who just happened to be big Obama supporters.
 
[quote name='speedracer']Well I don't think they're the same thing and I think people are trying to make it the same thing, so I tried to explain the difference.

Solyndra had a business plan and a product that it manufactured tens of millions of dollars worth. The administration failed to properly vet, but that's not a shortcoming worth summary execution when the other 98.4% of the total investment portfolio is performing. Solyndra just didn't have the breakthrough it thought it had and paired with a flood of cheaper, comparable materials, they lost the market fight.

By contrast, Rick Perry raided the Texas surplus fund and quite literally handed it to his cronies who turned around and produced just this side of absolutely nothing, burning through tens of millions of dollars in the process.

One of these things deserves a "well that was stupid" and one of these deserves a federal investigation. Of course based on the outcome, you'd be absolutely wrong if you went with common sense to decide which was which.[/QUOTE]

Something I have said before, cons intentionally thwart good government and then bitch about government not working.

During the Bush/DeLay/Abramoff years, god knows how much money was given out to well connected contractors who literally had zero ability to do the jobs they were contracted for. These "contractors" would then sub contract people who actually did the work.

Also said before, I am not seeing anything quite like the above with solyndra.
 
[quote name='UncleBob']I'd agree - if it weren't for the fact that the administration did "properly vet" Solyndra. Had the company set to fail in the exact month it ended up failing.[/quote]
You're confusing two separate instances. There was "the loan" from the government then two years later the private market made another loan to Solyndra. It was before the 2nd loan that Mr. Deserves A Friggin Raise analyst called his shot.
After all that, they still loaned the money.
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They being private investors. So no, this chain is broken by the fact that it wasn't government money once the auditors realized she was a black swan. That's my point. People are making it sound like Obama and his buddies were just stuffing this bird full of cash, even after it became obvious Solyndra was dead.
To people who just happened to be big Obama supporters.
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This fact alone doesn't establish anything, just as it doesn't with Perry's slush fund.

[quote name='Msut77']Something I have said before, cons intentionally thwart good government and then bitch about government not working.[/QUOTE]
What up dude. Long time no talk.

It's pretty friggin crazy that Solyndra is what they're hanging their hats on. It's the equivalent of a uncaught serial killer demanding his jaywalking brother turn himself in. There's a complete disconnect in their own narrative. They want so very badly for this to be THE ONE but it makes em come off petty and sorta crazy. And then there's the straight up schizophrenic thing when you consider that Bush had charges this "bad" or worse leveled every couple of months. They've waited three years to even get this much on Obama and they're going federal investigation and committee? wtf?

I remember Clinton getting hammered on, but it wasn't straight up burning the country to fire the guy. I can't believe what I've seen these three years. Even now, the Republicans won't allow the payroll tax to be cut because Obama wants it cut. And not a peep from the base. I mean, what? Wait, huh? It literally happened in a day. They spent 3 years demanding tax cuts in any and all forms. Obama asks for a specific tax cut and they literally stop in one day and 180 and start talking about how short term measures are wrong. Now non-permanent tax cuts bad. And they've always been at war with Eurasia.
 
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Obvious stupidity, but compared to the multi-trillion dollar stupidity that is our foreign policy and capitulation to the banking cartel, it's kind of hard to get lathered up over this.
 
Well, as a political matter it's easy to see why people get lathered up over it. You surely know that.

It's convenient despite how preposterous it all is, for the reasons speed and others have pointed out.
 
This thread rises from the ashes.
http://exiledonline.com/the-solyndr...-in-kochs-cato-institute-runs-americas-elect/

One of Solyndra’s largest investors, private equity firm RockPort Capital, is run by longtime Koch-connected junk bond financier named Peter Ackerman, who served on the Cato Institute’s elite Board of Directors from 1995 to 2003. Ackerman also helped the Kochs’ premier libertarian thinktank push for the privatization of Social Security.
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RockPort Capital wasn’t simply invested in Solyndra. According to a Wall Street Journal article on the Solyndra-RockPort connection published a few weeks back, Ackerman’s equity firm was instrumental in helping the failed solar firm secure government contracts and funding, including the half billion dollars in federal loan money that all the rightwingers are up in arms about:
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It gets even weirder: As it turns out, Peter Ackerman is also the guy behind the shady political third-party project ”financed with some serious hedge-fund money“ called Americans Elect that’s been getting a lot of play lately. Here’s LA Times columnist Doyle McManus on Ackerman’s Americans Elect:
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Not news:
Obama administration stimulus funding for renewable energy has resulted in yet another clean energy breakthrough. This time, in hydropower, with the development of a revolutionary new turbine technology that is both fish-friendly and energy efficient.

...

Until now, fish mortality and energy production have been mutually exclusive. Traditional, highly efficient hydro power killed or maimed fish, but more fish-friendy projects were less efficient at making electricity, losing 8,500 megawatt-hours of production a year operating separate bypasses to allow fish through unharmed.

...

But full-scale testing would be needed, and in 2009, that is what the project got, because under the increase in funding for clean energy by the Obama administration, increased funding made possible a critical round of several years of developmental engineering and full-scale testing at the Voith Hydro Hydraulic Test Stand Facility in York, Pennsylvania. Now those full-scale tests have produced results (full technical report of prototype testing) that have exceeded expectations, with a win-win for both fish survival and energy production.
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Not including the additional power generated by all of the places that have no turbines due to political concerns (of which there is a shit ton in the Pacific Northwest, they hate hydro), upgrading existing facilities will produce enough new power to equal 17 coal fired plants and prevent the burning of 23.8 million tons of coal each year. About 3% of all coal fired plants in the United States could be turned off with no net loss in power.

Again, that's before any new projects come on line using this technology.

Back to regularly scheduled programming.
 
Speed imagine all the time money and expertise put into the a bomb into something like clean energy. I remember a troll once said something like "imagine all the good these companies could do with the money they paid in taxes" and no one said imagine how well research projects would go if corporations had to teach workers to read first.
 
And yet it would still get spun as if it's some sort of commufascist takeover, or government waste in action, or some other BS conservative talking point.
 
Hey, look over here at this good happening!

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain paying off his friends with taxpayer money...
 
[quote name='Clak']And yet it would still get spun as if it's some sort of commufascist takeover, or government waste in action, or some other BS conservative talking point.[/QUOTE]

It keeps it in perspective if you remember they are trained to lie and twist shit around. Whether for pay or just to piss off libs.
 
[quote name='UncleBob']Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain paying off his friends with taxpayer money...[/QUOTE]
Please explain who made what money and how they were facilitated. Thanks.
[quote name='Msut77']Speed imagine all the time money and expertise put into the a bomb into something like clean energy.[/quote]
If I were president, it would be my Kennedy man on the moon speech. Imagine how much money we would have if we didn't pay for power. Anywhere. At all. Imagine transportation costing dollars a year. Imagine not having an electric or gas bill. Imagine your company not having a power bill or a transportation bill that in any galaxy approaches what you have now. It's all I want in the whole world. Hell, I'd vote for an pro-lifer that promised to put 50% of the military budget in energy R&D.
I remember a troll once said something like "imagine all the good these companies could do with the money they paid in taxes" and no one said imagine how well research projects would go if corporations had to teach workers to read first.
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Libertarians. They're so cute. When they're 15.
 
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