Good thing government is here to invest in new technologies for us...
#1
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Good thing government is here to invest in new technologies for us...
Look at all these exciting new ideas that would not possible if we left it to the free market to provide investment funding! What a bold new future!
Forget Bain — Obama’s public-equity record is the real scandal
Forget Bain — Obama’s public-equity record is the real scandal
Despite a growing backlash from his fellow Democrats, President Obama has doubled down on his attacks on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital. But the strategy could backfire in ways Obama did not anticipate. After all, if Romney’s record in private equity is fair game, then so is Obama’s record in public equity — and that record is not pretty.
Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions. Consider just a few examples of Obama’s public equity failures:
● Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.
● ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to 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.”
Worse, according to CBS News the company is “under investigation for insider trading,” and Karner has been subpoenaed “for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company.”
● Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP). The Obama administration gave NGP a $98.5 million taxpayer loan guarantee 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.’ ”
● First Solar. The Obama administration provided First Solar with more than $3 billion in loan guarantees 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.”
● Abound Solar, Inc. The Obama administration gave Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee to build photovoltaic panel factories. According to Forbes, in February the company halted production and laid off 180 employees.
● Beacon Power. The Obama administration gave Beacon — a green-energy storage company — a $43 million loan guarantee. 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.
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.
Amazingly, Obama has declared that all the projects received funding “based solely on their merits.” But as Hoover Institution scholar Peter Schweizer reported in his book, “Throw Them All Out,” fully 71 percent of the Obama Energy Department’s grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.” Collectively, these Obama cronies raised $457,834 for his campaign, and they were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 billion. Obama said this week it’s not the president’s job “to make a lot of money for investors.” Well, he sure seems to have made a lot of (taxpayer) money for investors in his political machine.
All that cronyism and corruption is catching up with the administration. According to Politico, “The Energy Department’s inspector general has launched more than 100 criminal investigations” related to the department’s green-energy programs.
Now the man who made Solyndra a household name says Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital “is what this campaign is going to be about.” Good luck with that, Mr. President. If Obama wants to attack Romney’s alleged private equity failures as chief executive of Bain, he’d better be ready to defend his own massive public equity failures as chief executive of the United States.
Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters — leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions. Consider just a few examples of Obama’s public equity failures:
● Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.
● ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company’s president, Don Karner, in the first lady’s box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to 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.”
Worse, according to CBS News the company is “under investigation for insider trading,” and Karner has been subpoenaed “for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company.”
● Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP). The Obama administration gave NGP a $98.5 million taxpayer loan guarantee 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.’ ”
● First Solar. The Obama administration provided First Solar with more than $3 billion in loan guarantees 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.”
● Abound Solar, Inc. The Obama administration gave Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee to build photovoltaic panel factories. According to Forbes, in February the company halted production and laid off 180 employees.
● Beacon Power. The Obama administration gave Beacon — a green-energy storage company — a $43 million loan guarantee. 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.
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.
Amazingly, Obama has declared that all the projects received funding “based solely on their merits.” But as Hoover Institution scholar Peter Schweizer reported in his book, “Throw Them All Out,” fully 71 percent of the Obama Energy Department’s grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.” Collectively, these Obama cronies raised $457,834 for his campaign, and they were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 billion. Obama said this week it’s not the president’s job “to make a lot of money for investors.” Well, he sure seems to have made a lot of (taxpayer) money for investors in his political machine.
All that cronyism and corruption is catching up with the administration. According to Politico, “The Energy Department’s inspector general has launched more than 100 criminal investigations” related to the department’s green-energy programs.
Now the man who made Solyndra a household name says Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital “is what this campaign is going to be about.” Good luck with that, Mr. President. If Obama wants to attack Romney’s alleged private equity failures as chief executive of Bain, he’d better be ready to defend his own massive public equity failures as chief executive of the United States.
#3
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If you'd like to read about a success story instead, look up Soitec. French company partnered with mine (now German owned) to produce solar panels in San Diego.
Here's a link: http://www.soitec.com/en/news/press-...gy-market-820/
No gov't money (although I'm sure there are some tax breaks involved) and we're actually profitable. I make the tooling which makes the forming tools which make the SOG lenses.
Here's a link: http://www.soitec.com/en/news/press-...gy-market-820/
No gov't money (although I'm sure there are some tax breaks involved) and we're actually profitable. I make the tooling which makes the forming tools which make the SOG lenses.
#4
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If you'd like to read about a success story instead, look up Soitec. French company partnered with mine (now German owned) to produce solar panels in San Diego.
Here's a link: http://www.soitec.com/en/news/press-...gy-market-820/
No gov't money (although I'm sure there are some tax breaks involved) and we're actually profitable. I make the tooling which makes the forming tools which make the SOG lenses.
Here's a link: http://www.soitec.com/en/news/press-...gy-market-820/
No gov't money (although I'm sure there are some tax breaks involved) and we're actually profitable. I make the tooling which makes the forming tools which make the SOG lenses.
facist.
#7
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/obama-...ry?id=14592626
Apparently over 70% of DOE loans went to companies with direct ties to campaign bundlers for Obama. Cool.
Here in California we've got a neat little cycle--prop up the Teacher's Union with government money, take union dues and funnel to government lackeys. Rinse, repeat.
Teacher's Union = owns California
Apparently over 70% of DOE loans went to companies with direct ties to campaign bundlers for Obama. Cool.
Here in California we've got a neat little cycle--prop up the Teacher's Union with government money, take union dues and funnel to government lackeys. Rinse, repeat.
Teacher's Union = owns California
#8
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http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/obama-...ry?id=14592626
Apparently over 70% of DOE loans went to companies with direct ties to campaign bundlers for Obama. Cool.
Here in California we've got a neat little cycle--prop up the Teacher's Union with government money, take union dues and funnel to government lackeys. Rinse, repeat.
Teacher's Union = owns California
Apparently over 70% of DOE loans went to companies with direct ties to campaign bundlers for Obama. Cool.
Here in California we've got a neat little cycle--prop up the Teacher's Union with government money, take union dues and funnel to government lackeys. Rinse, repeat.
Teacher's Union = owns California
#10
I work in the auto industry, and people actually get mad that we dont do things for free, Or when we tell someone that we cant do any better because we are giving them the parts or tires at cost or 5 dollars over, they will tell you do better.
Occasionally I have to tell someone that we are in business to make a profit and not a charity and they just plain and simple dont get it.
#15
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This is a big challenge with public-private partnerships versus pure public utilities or R&D: corruption/cronyism and the idea of trying to pick winners versus trying to provide research funding which winners can end up using. These are the stories that lead to the notion that all government spending is wasteful or bad.
No one ever talks about antibiotics, RADAR, MRI machines, computers, QuickClot, GPS, etc.
20 years from now, if the USA automobile manufacturing sector is churning out 15 million cars per year, are your kids going to be sending some of them back via time machine to pay off their debt? Are we sending back iPhones and 747s to pay off the debts of WW2?
You might lose sleep over the corruption of money in politics, but your kids will consume what they produce in real terms.
No one ever talks about antibiotics, RADAR, MRI machines, computers, QuickClot, GPS, etc.
You might lose sleep over the corruption of money in politics, but your kids will consume what they produce in real terms.
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