What it will buy is a heavy rotation anti-Obama attack ad, accusing him of unethical behavior in the Solyndra affair (or, if you're a Tea-Bagger, the Solyndra "scandal"). You've probably seen the ad.
Begun in 2005, Solyndra made commercial solar panels. In 2007 it applied for a Dept. of Energy loan, available to certain qualifying companies. In 2009 the new Obama administration, anxious to spotlight a model of government investment in green technology, gave Solyndra a $535 million construction loan, even though some in the DOE cautioned against it. The company built its plant, but by August 2011, Solyndra went bankrupt, shut down, and laid off its workers. Soon after, the FBI released some company emails where officials essentially acknowledge that their business has failed, and they are just rearranging the Titanic's deck chairs.
The supposed ethics issue is that Solyndra's largest shareholder is George Kaiser, of the Kaiser Family Foundation. He was also a big contributor to Obama's 2008 campaign. Did Kaiser's donation grease the skids for obtaining the DOE loan? Maybe. But Solyndra's second-largest shareholder is the Walton Family Trust, who are major contributors to Republican candidates and causes. The company's big backers were spreading their wealth around evenly.
Bottom line: Hold on to your socks, people, because -- OMG! -- politics played a role in the decision to lend money to Solyndra. Big surprise, huh? Government investment in certain industries is long-standing practice, and not a bad one. In the case of Solyndra, they bet on the wrong horse. It's happened before. We'll get some of our money back in the liquidation process.
And the best the Rightards can come up with is their impersonation of Police Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca: They are shocked -- shocked! -- to find this sort of thing happening in Washington D.C.!
The ad closes with a moralistic harrumph: "President Obama -- American workers aren't pawns in your political games." And then we can read, quickly, that this one-minute manipulation was brought to us by Americans For Prosperity, the Koch brothers front group. The Koch brothers are multi-billionaire oil magnates and financial supporters of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
What bullshit then for AFP to profess concern about "workers". AFP is, in fact, strongly opposed to labor unions, workers rights, environmental protections, cap and trade legislation, healthcare reform, stimulus spending, and Democrats in general.
Their attack ad boils down to selfish pissing and moaning because the government invested in somebody else's energy industry, not theirs. Waaah!
Who has the ethical problem?
By what authority, does the government have the right, to invest our money in ANY business/industry?
ReplyDeleteI smell TEA!
ReplyDeleteBrian, you're no more of a constitutional scholar than I am, but that doesn't prevent you from being an "originalist" who believes the document is Holy Writ, its words frozen time, never to be "interpreted" (unless by Antonin Scalia).
What I know about our Constitution is that it permits the Congress to regulate business and commerce, and grants it the power to tax and spend.
Within that framework, over our history the U.S. government has provided financial support instrumental in the development of public universities, railroads, aviation, agriculture, and the internet, to name but a few.
A failure at Solyndra should not deter the government from investing in similar solar technologies and in other energy alternatives.
And work on that punctuation. In a very short sentence, you have two commas too many!