Government cronies win, taxpayers lose in energy loan deals

ThomasNet News, part of an industrial search engine site, has the scoop on energy loan deals with Democrat donors and well-known political activists like Robert Kennedy, Jr. A recent article by David Sims disclosed:

As investigative journalist Peter Schweizer reports in his new book, Throw Them All Out, 80 percent of all $20.5 billion in Department of Energy loans went to President Obama’s top donors, including such megarich one percenter Democrats as Google owners Larry Page and Sergey Brinn, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ted Turner, John Doerr, and Al Gore.

Solar panels [US Dept. of Energy]The US Report has raised questions about taxpayer losses because of Solydra and questions about loan guarantees to other companies.

Most Americans pay little attention to the science by consensus that has come to define the global warming/climate change/formerly Little Ice Age movement. The irony is that even as we ignore the battle over US energy resources, our utility bills continue to rise.

The president’s policies are ramping up utility costs for every home in the country.

The United States has an abundance of energy resources, but President Barack Obama has put a lock on just about everything other than solar.

Although there are environmental tradeoffs with every kind of energy, no one ever speaks about potential environmental tradeoffs with solar. Land disturbance, for instance. Had you thought about acre upon acre of those shiny panels? You can’t put them beneath a canopy of trees.

The Wall Street Journal summed up solar problems in a recent article:

Over the past several months, at least seven solar-panel manufacturers have filed for bankruptcy or insolvency, including two German companies in the past week—Solar Millennium AG and Solon SE—and, most notably, Solyndra LLC, the Fremont, Calif., company embroiled in a criminal investigation into whether the company defrauded the U.S. government. [Dec. 27, ‘Dark Times Fall on Solar Sector’]

Sims at ThomasNet summed up the benefits for one government energy crony:

BrightSource claimed their construction project would be a green jobs creator. But the company’s own Web site admits that it will create 1,400 temporary construction jobs at best, and only its peak construction, and at best only 650 jobs thereafter.

Again, we’ll wait while you do the math there. Be generous — assume the 1,400 number. That’s still about $1 million per job. And since they’re certainly not paying their construction workers $1 million each, it might be interesting to ask Mr. Kennedy where the rest of the money’s going.

As Obama has narrowly focused on one energy source, government cronies have prospered, fattening their pockets by picking the pockets of working Americans.

Next time this president tells you he’s a warrior for the middle class, tell yourself he’s a warrior for sure, but his assault is on the middle class, not for it.

Related Articles

(Source) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-Connected green energy company rakes in $1.4 billion from Obama Administration  (ThomasNet)

Obama prosecutes a war on the middle class (National Conservative/Examiner.com)

Will global warming bubble tank the future middle class?  (The US Report)

Newt's discussion of Agenda 21 critical...  (The US Report)

(Op-Ed by Kay B. Day/Dec. 29, 2011)

Comments

[Jim Kress]

Just like in "Atlas Shrugged". It's frightening to see how prescient Ayn Rand was.

[KBD/Ed.]

Jim, I finally watched the first film of Atlas over the holidays. My husband hasn't read the novel although I've read it twice. I'd told him how visionary Rand was. After seeing the film, he was shocked to see exactly how specifically she had pegged Obama before he was even born. Of course she had Hoover and then Roosevelt, so she certainly had the model for what O has done. Roosevelt's socialist soul is fodder for Obama's redistributive agenda--redistributive for all but the political class, of course.

best, Kay