Posted on 11/09/2012 3:45:07 AM PST by Kaslin
President Obama promises to move the country forward with his recycled pledge of five million green jobs. But in the real world, small businesses are struggling to stay afloat as they deal with the fiscal wreckage of this administration's disastrous venture socialism. Here's the tale of just one Colorado company victimized by the Obama Department of Energy (DOE).
Colorado Distribution Group is a privately held storage and shipping company based in Denver. Thanks to hope-a-nomics, its warehouse is saddled with nearly 7,000 pallets of federally subsidized solar panels (one-third of which are completely spoiled and unsalable), along with related detritus such as broken glass and stray module parts.
While $22,000/month in storage costs go unpaid, the panels consume up to a third of the company's warehouse space. Legal costs have forced CDG to slash payroll and lay off at least three employees. A source with knowledge of CDG's woes told me this week the company is facing pressure by the Department of Energy to drop its petition to recoup those costs. The feds want CDG to swallow a $1.4 million tab to dispose of the bum solar panels.
In July, according to Dow Jones, CDG asked a Delaware bankruptcy court "for permission either to sell or collect rent on the property Abound Solar Inc. has at its facility, saying the situation is threatening its ability to stay in business." Like many private enterprises in the Age of Obama's Brass-Knuckled Politics of Revenge, fear of retribution holds back many from coming forward publicly about such attempted shakedowns.
CDG serves industries ranging from automotive to food and beverage, electronic, medical, furniture, clothing, sporting goods and telecommunications. Founded in 2005, CDG handles distribution, fulfillment, transportation, logistics and inventory management using a high-tech data system. For the past three years, the company warehoused solar panels manufactured by Fort Collins-based Abound Solar.
Yes, Abound Solar. Also known as: Colorado's own Solyndra.
In June, less than a year after fellow Obama green boondoggle Solyndra went belly up, Abound filed for bankruptcy. As I reported in March, the financial outlook of the $400 million DOE loan guarantee recipient was based on false hope and imaginary change. Obama's envirocrats ignored bright red flags from Fitch Ratings about Abound's substandard technology and failures to meet basic efficiency targets.
Abound borrowed $70 million against its $400 million Obama DOE loan guarantee; taxpayers will lose up to $60 million on the loan after the bankruptcy proceedings are complete. Nearly 125 Abound Solar employees lost their jobs. Screwed-over companies like CDG that did business with Abound are not alone. At least one other warehouse in Colorado is storing the costly panels. And an untold number of related contractors and businesses have been stiffed. "I did a lot of machining for Abound," one business owner told me this summer, "and they went under owing me a fair amount."
Recently released internal documents show that customers demanded replacements for the panels after experiencing "low performance," "under performance" and "catastrophic failures." Credit and technical advisers at DOE complained about having "major issues" with the Abound Solar deal and expressed concern over the "transaction pressure under which we are all now operating." The documents fly in the face of Obama's denial -- just days before Election Day -- that his White House played any role in this fiscal disaster.
The investigative work of Colorado's Todd Shepherd at CompleteColorado.com, Amy Oliver at the Independence Institute and Michael Sandoval now of the Heritage Foundation exposed Abound's crony ties to the Obama administration. Like Solyndra, Abound had a deep-pocketed bundler with ties to the White House. Progressive activist and billionaire heiress Pat Stryker, a repeat visitor to the Obama White House, owns an investment firm that invested considerably in Abound and donated nearly $500 million to the Democrats between 2008 and 2012.
Criminal and civil probes into Abound Solar's alleged malfeasance -- there are reports that the firm knowingly sold faulty goods -- have been launched in both Colorado and on Capitol Hill. The stench of pay-for-play abounds. While Obama giddily promises his cronies and sycophants that "the best is yet to come," small-business owners are fighting for their lives. Where's their "fair share"?
Talk to any landlord who has a scofflaw tenant file for bankruptcy. It takes months, if not longer, to get that tenant out of the premises in most states.
“I did a lot of machining for Abound,” one business owner told me this summer, “and they went under owing me a fair amount.”
I don’t know whether or not it is true, but supposedly the relief supplies FEMA wants to bring to NY/NJ are delayed because some contractors haven’t been paid yet for those delivered in Katrina.
Business as we know it is being up-ended as white-owned businesses close down; they will be replaced by “minority/women owned businesses”. Massive re-distribution of wealth, South Africa-style (just a softer version of Zimbabwe-style). Laws will mandate how many non-whites you are required to hire (we’re already there), and the wealth transfer is taking only one generation to complete. Young white men today are lucky enough to get a job or an education; families and homes aren’t even on their radar (and this past election showed the impact of that).
And it’s just the beginning.
I’ll bet they’re hoping for some change.
I am a small business owner/ a manufacturers rep firm. We speacilaize in areas with hazardous gasses. I refuse to do any work with the Feds as what has happened here is common. I was asked to bid on a small 80K project for the Feds. 4 line items thats all. The bid was over 80 Pages. I wrote NO BID on the first page and sent it in.
Watch out for Directive 10-289. Wesley Mouch wil be coming for you.
The only thing you can do is punish them economically...don’t hire anyone who voted for Obama; don’t frequent commercial sites whose owners voted for Obama, don’t hire anyone to do work around your home who voted for Obama.
How would you know who voted for Obama? Just ask them. If they say: they won’t tell you, or they didn’t vote, or they voted for the Bastard in Chief, then tell them you only hire people who voted for Romney.
Don’t have the balls to do this? Then don’t complains about who your president is for the next four years.
You Got IT Right. This has been going on since the 60s even then the only great opportunity for a white boy was the military, bad mistake on my part! Take a good look at the Sharp Edge of the military now I am meaning the fighting part, tell me what color you see. True even today......
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You Got IT Right. This has been going on since the 60s even then the only great opportunity for a white boy was the military, bad mistake on my part! Take a good look at the Sharp Edge of the military now I am meaning the fighting part, tell me what color you see. True even today......
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I’m with you patronizing conservative businesses. When you get your check at a restaurant, see if you can get a feel for how the server voted. Tip them accordingly.
BTW, my son works in food service. Blacks seldom tip and if they do it’s just a few dollars. So I have started doing the same to any black servers I have. I figure they aren’t into tipping and won’t care if I don’t tip them.
I can’t find anyone who didn’t vote for ubama
I would like to see a convoy of dump trucks deliver the goods to DOE headquarters.
Friend had a renter file for bankruptcy. Had to wait a year to begin eviction. THEN the wife files for bankruptcy in a separate petition. Another year...
When I was part owner of a consulting engineering business our attitude was “life is too short to do government work.”
Most firms that do it either do it exclusively, or have separate divisions to handle it. This is particularly true for FedGov work.
The solution is to load them up and haul them to a Kansas dump.
Waiting on lawyers is a losing proposition.
Plea for forgiveness, not for permission.
Probably one of the most prescient posts ever.. this one from 2008: Sunni Cleric: Allah Will Send an 'American Gorbachev' to End the American Empire Soon . A FReeper coined the word Barrystroika as the name of Obama's subversion. I hope the FReeper registered the domain name. I do not know why it's not used to identify what's happening to our economy.
No one has heard of perestroika?
Perestroika was "Mikhail Gorbachev's program of economic, political, and social restructuring, became the unintended catalyst for dismantling what had taken nearly three-quarters of a century to erect: the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist totalitarian state." (Internet source: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/pere.html)
Of source here in the U.S. the dismantling is intentional and Obama calls it "transformation."
Wot? Who's Mikhail Gorbachev? He was the Soviet leader when Reagan was president. Wot? Wot's a Soviet? . . . .
I know a few guys back from Afghanistan that can’t find work now; two wanted to be cops but all of our towns here have stopped hiring (in some cases even laying off).
obama and the dems have set race relations back fifty years.
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