How the GOP Is Using Solyndra to Kill Clean Energy

[stockholmer]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/how-gop-is-using-solyndra-to-kill-clean-energy-20110926


Last Friday, House Republicans achieved a much-sought-after goal: to criminalize the pursuit of clean energy in America.

Granted, Congress has not yet passed laws to jail entrepreneurs and engineers who dare to develop technology that will reduce the stranglehold that Big Oil and Big Coal have over our lives, but it might not be far away. If nothing else, last Friday’s hearing in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in which executives of Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar company that blew through $535 million in federal grants and, along the way, made President Obama look like a just another shill for corrupt clean-energy hustlers, was a triumph of political theatre. There was Brian Harrison, the CEO of Solyndra, and Bill Stover, the company’s chief financial officer, sitting ashen-faced in front of the committee, refusing to answer questions (they pleaded the Fifth) and looking for all the world like stonewalling sleazebags.

Who knows what laws, if any, these guys have broken? And who knows what tawdry details the unraveling of Solyndra will reveal? (The New York Times had a good backgrounder http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/us/politics/in-rush-to-assist-solyndra-united-states-missed-warning-signs.html?ref=earth last week, and the Los Angeles Times ran a piece http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/24/business/la-fi-solyndra-20110925 this morning that reveals that the federal government was far from the only sucker for Solyndra – private investors like Richard Branson also lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the company’s collapse.) But at this point, that hardly matters. House Republicans have already got what they want – video images of the clean-tech entrepreneurs looking like crooks.

They know that most Americans are far too stupid about how Silicon Valley-style capitalism really works – that companies on the cutting edge of innovative new industries like solar (or, a generation ago, PCs or the internet) fail all the time. That is how good ideas are separated from bad ideas. In fact, failure is a badge of honor in Silicon Valley – it means at least you got off your ass and tried to make a go of your ideas.





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[DrunkenBoat]

1. I don't quite buy this analysis. Big Energy dominates solar & wind already,

so why would they want to torpedo them?

[chollybocker]

2. Petrol is more profitable.

It's like shorting MaEarth.

[NYC_SKP]

4. The GOP and Big Energy, while connected at the hip and lung, are still two different animals. AND

They do not exactly dominate wind and solar already.

[Demeter]

3. You can't fix stupid, you can only point it out

[DrunkenBoat]

5. It's not "stupid" just because we don't get the reasons. They're not stupid.

[BanTheGOP]

6. Bush and Cheney had actually ORCHESTRATED this mess!

The GOP is screaming about Obama's alleged involvement with hurrying through Solyndra's acceptance and its subsequent half-billion dollar loan. But evidence shows otherwise.
The GOP is attempting to pull off their biggest circle jerk of the year. They think they have the smoking gun with the purported direct involvement of illegal corporate cronyism by accusing the the Obama Administration with financial shenanigans manipulating the Green solar power company, Solyndra. In fact, this event has been PURPOSELY ORCHESTRATED by none other than Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, using their crony capitalist cohorts to mastermind the entire fiasco strictly to make the Obama Administration look guilty for financial malfeasance.

Bush, Cheney, and GOP Responsible for Attempt to Discredit Obama with Solyndra