Posted on 09/21/2011 1:39:07 PM PDT by neverdem
The Solyndra boondoggle illustrates the folly of treating global warming as an economic blessing.
When Solyndra went belly up last month, less than a year after it started making solar arrays in Fremont, California, an Energy Department spokesman insisted that the $535 million the federal government had loaned the company was well spent. "The project that we supported succeeded," he said. "The facility was producing the product it said it would produce."
That rather short-sighted definition of success exemplifies the loopy logic of President Obama's "green jobs" agenda, which justifies subsidies based on good intentions and employment opportunities rather than profitability or cost-effectiveness. This policy is rooted in the broken planet fallacy, which treats global warming not as an environmental threat to be handled as expeditiously as possible but as an economic opportunity to be milked for all the jobs it can provide.
When he took office in January 2009, Obama promised to "help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future." The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which he signed the following month, included a down payment on that plan, described by Vice President Joseph Biden as "more than $20 billion for investment in a cleaner, greener economy," aimed at showing "how investing in green jobs will help build a strong middle class."
A month later, Obama put the figure at "$59 billion invested in clean energy and in tax incentives to promote clean energy." By that fall, the number had expanded to "about $80 billion" for "projects related to energy and the environment."...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Change the company name to SObomaLYNDRA and it would make more sense.
This loony "Energy Department spokesman" needs to have his @$$ dragged before the Senate hearing tomorrow to 'splain to everyone what was "well spent" about $535 million taxpayers dollars being flushed down the toilet. These commie bass turds. They could care less what happens as long as it happens to somebody else's money. Typical commie government bureaucrat.
This discussion doesn’t have to venture into the “broken planet” “green jobs” ephemeral zones, and the efforts to do so should seen for what they are, as feeble attempts to obfuscate the underlying issues.
This is flaming, naked thuggish ripoffery of taxpayer funds, no more, no less. Further delusion unnecessary.
I am going to borrow $250,000,000 and hire 250 people to manufacture buggy whips. By the government’s seeming “standards” up until the moment I file bankruptcy, my company will be a wonderful success, in quadrupling the world’s supply of buggy whips.
I will be so proud of me.
As always with lefties, facts are irrelevant.
What counts are their feelings and intentions.
“Sorry we wasted another $500 million, but what is important is that we meant well.”
This green crap is nothing but an attack on capitalism (”green” energy is incapable of supporting a capitalist economy and they know it),
with the consent of sheeperals who need a reason to think of themselves as significant for supporting policies touted as “saving the erf”.
Hey, maybe we could develop some “synergy” -
I’ll get a loan to manufacture those “poop bags” that they strap on horses.
Coal and oil beckon if only the government would get out of the way.
Greenies are watermelons - green on the outside, red on the inside.
But a watermelon has positive values while greenies...don’t.
Once the greenies find the programs and schemes don’t work, they will declare the reason of their failure is caused by too many people. Their leadership has to expect this. The are questions that needed to be asked of them now.
Screw coal. They supported this usurping Muslim foreigner and his douchebag veep even after they publicly acknowledged they wanted to kill the coal industry. Dumbclucks, I hope every last one of them is in a bread line.
Environmentalism is the Broken Windows fallacy writ large.
Global Warming on Free Republic
Not to put too fine a point on it, but where exactly did they say they were sorry?
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