THE SOLAR POWERED RUNWAY

Secretary Stephen Chu is being chewed out by the House oversight committee on the loan guarantees given to the solar panel company that went bankrupt in August of 2011 after receiving 535 million taxpayer dollars.

Watching the hearings reminds me of a blast from the past. The senate hearings on Organized crime in the 1960’s in which Mafia bosses denied being anything other than being upstanding American citizens.

Stephen Chu claims no previous awareness of any of the politically motivated e-mails involving Solyndra by White House, investor George Kaiser, Office of Management and Budget or Soylndra executives until they were reported in the press days before he testified.

Apparently Stephen Chu the White House and the Democrats want Americans to believe there is no scandal, no illegality, no undue political influence, no break from SOP (standard operating procedure) and no incompetency.

Interesting that both the CEO and the CFO of Solyndra (Brian Harrison and W. G. Stover) both pleaded their Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer questions about their company to Congress weeks earlier given that all is above board in this “un-scandal”.

We have now learned that the White House was involved along with the DOE in requesting Solyndra to delay announcement of its bankruptcy and layoffs from its plan in October 28, 2010 until November 3, 2010.

Collectively we dawn a deadpan face as the political games played in Washington has jaded us all to expectations far from great.  Is anybody shocked that the White House tried to bury the evidence of the failed Solyndra that it took down the runway as the latest fashionable future in energy?

Americans know how the political game works or should we more aptly suggests doesn’t work for the people. The altruism in Washington to set policy that benefits the public  is a pretense Americans know well.

Retuning to my mafia analogy, we all know that in order to be a part of any corrupt cabal one needs to either be just an unscrupulous person begging membership or a patsy to be used.

Stephen Chu is a renowned physicist that truly believes in green energy and although his left leaning political belief in global warming makes him culpable to conservative criticism, no one seriously views him as corrupt.

Instead this good guy geek was brought into the Chicago political gang and given the job of Secretary of the Department of Energy for two reasons reputation and naivety.  How else does this administration manipulate favoritism to his campaign fundraisers (Kaiser) and make it all seem coincidental?

The worst outrage of the Solyndra story of course is the disputed legality of the loan restructuring that put taxpayers out in the cold as a secured creditor while the private investors went to the head of the line.

Stephen Chu seemed calm under fire when he explained to Congress that when the DOE learned that Solyndra had a serious cash flow problem the government was left with two choices. One pulls the loan and ensures Solyndra falls quickly into bankruptcy where taxpayers would take a bath or restructure the loan. Chu’s argument for the latter involved Solyndra’s half built building that would not become a salable asset unless it was completed.

However, most Americans are rightfully confused that if the reason to not pull the loan was to insure that the taxpayer had asset equity to liquidate if the company went under, then how did it benefit the taxpayers to be made secondary creditors over private investors?

In business there is always the paradoxical choice of what to do with a high volume sales customer that does not pay their bill. Shut them off and you lose those sales while chasing your money in court or keep extending them credit and hope they will adhere to a payment plan and not beat you out of greater debt. However, I know of no such plan that involves handing your receivables over to a third party in which you lose either way if the customer pays or defaults? 

This can only happen in a government managed or should we say mismanaged loan program. We have seen politics mixed with many endeavors such as war strategy and we know it is a toxic mixture. No American is surprised that politics mixed with business not only creates failure, corruption, favoritism, waste, inefficiency and fraud but worse it displays a public disdain.

The Democrats on the Committee shrugged their shoulders that this was not a scandal, but a normal expected outcome of the policy to lend taxpayer dollars to losing causes. The fact that the government threw half a billion dollars on the green energy betting table and it lost was no big deal. The fact that the loan was restructured to make the taxpayer insolvent happens every day.

The idea that Stephen Chu should even be questioned given his impeccable credentials to the Democrats is the only outrage.

Yes, this administration found the perfect patsy in Stephen Chu to kill two birds with one stone, pay back Obama’s fundraising friends and use a green energy company to laud the president’s environmental success story.

However, even though the emperors clothes are now revealing their transparent see through exposure it will be the patsy dressmaker (Chu) that will take the fall not the man gliding on the runway stage as the once Chicago super model that now struts in Washington.

J ust O bama B lowing S moke

We have been hearing the president talk about his focus on jobs since he took office. There has been little change in his speeches or political solutions that sounds straight out of the “tax the rich more, spend for the poor more” Democratic Party idea book.

Not only is nothing new in Obama’s latest JOBS proposal except that the word “stimulus” is purposely avoided, his Jobs Plan is being used as a political talking point for Obama’s re-election bus tour and is blatantly cynical.

Yet he and his party have the cheek to suggest that the Republicans are the party of NO and just wishing to keep the economy weak in order to defeat Obama in 2012.

If the Democrats and Obama want to say that the Republicans are blocking real growth and job creation then okay call the bluff.

Why not call the Republicans and see if they join you Mr. President in allowing oil drilling production to proceed by loosening regulations? Why not call them out by suspending all EPA regulations? Why not call them out by giving the Republicans all the cuts, and proposals they have asked for to see if they say NO?

Why not? I think all Americans know why not. The reason is that Republicans would pass those reforms and the country would start to see the economy grow. You don’t want Republican ideas to succeed where you and the Democrats Keynesian policies proved abysmally unsuccessful.

Solyndra the bankrupt poster child solar panel company for stimulus back green job energy alternatives reflects three truths about socialist’s policies, failure, incompetency and corruption.

Whether we call it socialism or crony capitalism the objective and the results mirror the same truth of why government run or backed private industry is an oxymoron. The simple fact that if a company was either successful or had the potential to be successful to private sector investors then the company would not need government financing nor want it.

What company wants to have the government peering over its books or making edicts about how to run its business? The fact that Solyndra could not find private investors until it secured a half billion dollars in federal loan money shows it was a risky venture. The capitalist system has a cure for risky business it is called failure, collapsing as a company and selling off assets or bankruptcy.

Solyndra was begging for government funds to keep it afloat and not only was it awarded half a billion dollars of taxpayer money but also received investment from the Kaiser Foundation that co-incidentally is connected to the President by George Kaiser a big donor to his campaign. This impropriety reeks of corruption well beyond cronyism.

Lastly, we turn to incompetency which must first start with the premise that the only companies standing in a government line for a government handout are already suspect as to their risk. Then you add a bureaucratic cadre of civil servants making determinations as to whom should be favored with taxpayer money and expect them to due diligence with the same vigor as if their own money was on the line.

Moreover, beyond number crunching most private investors know that having or utilizing the brain trust of people knowledgeable about the different industries is vital in the ultimate determination of risk return investment decisions.

 The bureaucrats in government have a vast ignorance of practical application relying more heavily on theoretical business models.

Yes, like Keynesian economics which works great as a college theoretical discussion but has proven time and time again in the practical world to be a huge flop!

Solyndra was Obama’s poster child of success until it went bankrupt. Many questions will be asked of this administration as to whether there was corruption in the form of bribes, pressure applied to regulators or quid pro quo proof of buying White House influence.

One thing is certain; this administration continues to extol capital cronyism and socialists policies in its never-ending bullying of America's capitalists that want the opposite economic policies returned to Washington.

The President may have stopped a personal habit of blowing smoke but when it comes to his desire to ruin this country’s capitalism and turn her into a socialist’s Republic he continues to blow smoke into American faces that just want to have a job.