Solyndra-gate? No. [re. Benicia Herald Forum] –rms, 9-9-11. [451 txt wds]

Jim, I wish you could see your mind at work malfunctioning the way I can see it. I can see you refraining from balanced appraisal, as usual, in order to cast further aspersion on Obama’s administration and more particularly on “green” concepts and interests. The latter is especially wrong-headed of you. It distresses me that you echo your “Republican leaders” again, uncritically, and that you ignore some significant aspects of the issue: [Bloomberg 9-9-11:] “The FBI raid further underscores that Solyndra was a bad bet from the beginning and put taxpayers at unnecessary risk,” said top Republican leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and Cliff Stearns of Florida, in a joint statement:‘Irresponsibly choosing winners and losers on projects like Solyndra is a perilous and often doomed method to create jobs,’ they said.” Another nice, rhetorical slap-down, no?

Their view barely half-qualifies as a valid opinion. It would be nice if people could foresee impacts on their affairs of complicated events going on in other countries, especially impacts that were set in motion after affairs in question were set in motion with long planning based on prospects originally realistic and drawing big investment. You didn’t mention the FBI stepping in. But, that’s government, right?–showing as much concern about vanished funds as you do? I’d guess that some missing lucre may be in the private hands of “con-servative” business people like Blackwater or Brownair investors? At least you actually mention China, though not the fact that China is feverishly working to become Number One in Everything and has the finance to underbid U.S. competitors destructively. Did you pay any attention to Chinese policy changes or monetary manipulations since Solyndra’s formation? Not mentioned. Nor did you mention Solyndra’s projects and partners in Europe, such as Delhaize, Belgium , or relations with Export-Import Bank of the U.S. or KBC Bank NV.

Correctly you say there are more efficient sunlight-converting products than Solyndra’s, but not that they are not all designed for the same applications. You and Lund both have ways of f—ing up as much data as you present. You seem blithelyto assume Solyndra was “far behind its basic competition” from the start and both investors and government had to know it. This I doubt, you don’t document. (Of course, if Democrats are involved, errors are never honest, right?) It seems clear, management made mistakes. It put too much into construction and overhead at the outset. With input from John Huntsman, they might have known what China could pull. But, you don’t care. You want stimulus grants or loans to look bad, facts be damned.

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