Quit the outrage over Solyndra: Massive Obama scandal? There's no there there

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ^ | Sunday, September 9, 2012 | Michael Grunwald

[presidio9]

It was one year ago this month that the solar manufacturer Solyndra filed for bankruptcy, defaulting on a $535 million federal loan. The company’s name has become Republican shorthand for crony capitalism and the left’s green lunacy.

But the Solyndra story is not a scandal. It is an inevitable bump on the road to a clean-energy economy. And almost everything Americans think they know about Solyndra is wrong.

For starters, this story has bipartisan roots. President George W. Bush signed the bill launching the Energy Department’s loan program in 2005, and his administration selected Solyndra from 143 applicants for the first loan.

The deal almost closed during Bush’s last month in Washington, but the department’s career staff delayed it, saying the loan “appears to have merit” but wasn’t quite ready. Bush aides had given so many assurances to Solyndra’s CEO that they apologized.

Solyndra was not some fly-by-night operation; it was once the toast of Silicon Valley. It had raised $1 billion from elite investors — not just George Kaiser, an Obama bundler, but the Waltons of Wal-Mart fame, Republican donors and the British mogul Richard Branson.

And its slogan, “The New Shape of Solar,” was more than marketing fluff. Most solar panels look like tinted windows. Solyndra’s looked like ladders for lizards. Most panels harvest sunlight with silicon wafers. Solyndra’s relied on a metal mixture called CIGS etched onto elongated glass cylinders. They were unusually expensive, but they clicked together like Legos, which made installation a breeze and helped keep down costs.

The loan program was designed to help companies like Solyndra cross the so-called Valley of Death for risky technologies. The goal was not only to create green jobs, but to reduce our dependence on foreign petro-thugs, our carbon emissions and our vulnerability to energy price shocks.

Helping Solyndra build a factory was expected to create 6,000 construction jobs, 1,800 permanent jobs and enough solar panels to replace a coal plant every year.

Matt Rogers, the Obama administration official who took over the loan program, says he never felt an iota of political pressure to approve Solyndra. Republicans later subpoenaed 300,000 pages of administration documents, and they never found any evidence of politics behind the decision to award the loan.

Solyndra built its factory on time and on budget, which helped reduce the cost of its panels. Its revenues soared, as it attracted customers like Frito-Lay.

But silicon got unexpectedly cheap, so Solyndra’s financials evoked the old joke about losing money on every sale and trying to make it up on volume. The company also made some strategic mistakes and ran out of cash before a new management team could turn things around. Eventually, the Energy Department withdrew its lifeline.

But all lenders make bad loans. Obama’s stimulus package reserved $2.5 billion for Solyndra-style busts. A review led by a Republican financier found that the portfolio — which includes the world’s largest wind farm, a half dozen of the world’s largest solar farms and America’s first cellulosic biofuel refineries — is doing fine.

Overall, the stimulus poured $90 billion into clean energy, when the U.S. had been spending just a few billion a year, and it’s launched a quiet green revolution. We’ve doubled renewable power; with help from the low silicon prices that killed Solyndra, solar installations have soared 600%. The stimulus has jump-started the smart electric grid and created a new domestic battery industry for electric vehicles.

It won’t all pan out — that’s the nature of investment. Obama is betting on clean energy, putting public dollars into thousands of firms that can help move us away from fossil fuels. The market is picking the winners and losers, and Solyndra was one of the losers. But there’s nothing scandalous about that.

[CaptainK]

You can’t have a scandal if the press won’t give it press.

[x]

But see this:

At the time the Energy Department was considering the loan, however, an Office of Management and Budget analysis “suggested that Solyndra could run out of money in 2011” and said that it had a 20 percent chance of failing, which was actually well below some successful loans. An Energy Department official told Grunwald, “When I heard they got the first loan, I thought, oh, no! Noooooooo.”

Six Revelations From Michael Grunwald’s ‘The New New Deal’

Grunwald's response, though, would be that a lot of Washingtonians, Republican as well as Democrat, were pushing for loans for their own pet energy project.

The response to that would be that this was the one that went through and lost money. That's a lot more serious than projects that aren't adopted and don't cost the taxpayers anything.

FWIW, I wanted to find out if Michael Grunwald was related to legendary Timesman Henry Anatole Grunwald. I didn't, but Clintonista Mandy Grunwald was the old man's daughter.

[TigersEye]

The deal almost closed during Bush’s last month in Washington, but the department’s career staff delayed it, saying the loan “appears to have merit” but wasn’t quite ready.

Not the truth, Skippy. They didn't approve it because the GAO predicted that Solyndra would go bankrupt and it did almost exactly when predicted. It was guaranteed to fail and 0bungles dumped over half a billion dollars into it anyway.

You have two ways to explain that. Either 0bama is a complete moron or there was a quid pro quo.

[TigersEye]

I guess everyone is going to call him Skippy. LOL

[Nifster]

Lordy this guy needs a fact checker. He is spinning the WH lines as if they are real. Bush’s DOE had decided not to go ahead with Solyndra which is why the head honchos there started pimping themselves to O and company. From the initial premise onward this guy is just plain nuts

[Bob]

Why, all one has to do is look at history. Look at the huge Gov’t loans that Ford had to acquire to start his automobile company, or the huge loans that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had to take to start their computer companies. Look at the huge Govt’ loans required to start the bio-med expansions, the huge loans that the Wright Brothers had to undertake to make flight a reality.

And don't forget the government filling stations for cars when they first became available. Greedy private companies couldn't be counted on to build the needed infrastructure; government had to do it. </sarcasm>

[John S Mosby]

Many moons ago, in Alabama there was a state treasurer, seem to recall her name as Melba “watching the till” Allen (Melba Till Allen) who was defended by the dem machine (southern dems at the time) by saying:

“She didn’t take no STATE (of Alabama) money!!”

ie. it was ok to skim off the feds, no matter what.

This is the same thing—done nationally, for obamao re-elect. Stimulus slush.

[John S Mosby]

I had it sort of right. This was along similar lines as this Solyndra, at the State of Alabama level, having to do with a state sponsored attraction Stars over Alabama. Melba Allen was skimming money from banks she put the funds into, and got loans back from banks for her husbands and her personal use, in exchange.

The point was attempted to be made at her various trials that “no state money was lost” by doing this. An early version of the assumption that any money “belongs to the state”, and that the banks money was someone else’s money.

It is a wild read but I found a blog (not mine) on the history, and think it is also at wikipedia:
http://downfalldictionary.blogspot.com/2011/04/melba-till-allen-we-are-not-amused.html

[copaliscrossing]

Solar is a nitch technology good for powering calculators, watches and phone charges and not much else.

But but but but.....my liberal friend who just dumped a bunch of money into solar panels on his roof tells me that if everyone did what he did it would revolutionize the energy industry...lol. Stick it to "the man" (oil/gas man that is).

Of course I had to guide him through the whole "length of payback" conversation and I really flustered him when I told him that his idea wasn't really "fair" to the lower class/poor people because they cannot afford what he has. I also told him to forget about the whole subsidy thing (which helped him afford his system) because his "hero country" Germany is giving up on the whole solar subsidy thing because it is tanking their economy and we just cannot afford to do that at this point. I piled it on when I said "I feel really sorry for all those poor people that cannot have what you have" and that really flummoxed him.

I finally told him that it was fine if he and others wanted to do that as a hobby and he wanted to be the "solar preacher" on facebook but it is nothing more than a small drop in the big pond of the energy picture and it is no where near scalable.

[WOSG]

A BILLION DOLLARS TO A COMPANY WHOSE TECHNOLOGY WAS JUNK AND WHO WENT TO THE OBAMA WHITE TO GET LOANS SIGNED OFF, AND WHO OBAMA TOUTED.

And its slogan, “The New Shape of Solar,” was more than marketing fluff. “

It was marketing fluff. solar cells are flat because that geometry is best for creating energy, and the process is cheaper. Solyndra was more expensive and less energy efficient. It was junk.

Government has no business picking winners and losers because too often they pick losers.

[StAnDeliver]

C'mon, Grunnie is a lazy shitstain riding the TIME escalator to the bottom.

[lowbridge]

The ny daily news has been quite silent on many things that make obama look bad. Solyndra, fast and furious, etc. Now that they finally mention it, its only to declare that its much ado about nothing.

[upchuck]

Let’s stomp a little on Mr. Grunwald with this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2928644/posts

[MinuteGal]

The reporter, Mr. Grunwald, may have a nose for news, but it's so far up the wrong place that he'll he'll be running in place for the rest of his alloted time on this planet.

Leni

[Paladin2]

Solar IS good if TSHTF.

[Paladin2]

Mikie took his wifie’s last name?

[supremedoctrine]

It was inevitable the Solyndra spin would have to come soon:
here it comes from a “journalist” from a “major” NYC newspaper. Lots of fancy footwork and spin emanating from this article , lots of straw man arguments. At the supermarket today, I saw the new issue of TIME with a picture of Obama , wearing his characteristic broadly beaming yet somewhat “sheepish” smile, looking downward, with the big title: WHAT BARACK KNOWS NOW. Two years ago at least, I posted on FR to the effect that the spin we could expect in the second half of the O Administration would be along the lines of “The Education of Barack Obama”, as if the Presidency in his first term merely served as his apprenticeship to being President “for Real”. That is now what is upon us: the expectation that we have to see through another four years for him, so his “education” could be complete. Four years from now, we’re expected to grant our approval “Barack Obama, you are the most IMPROVED President we’ve ever had!”
WHAT. A. FARCE.

[generally]

Thank you. Great analysis! Should be required reading.

One point I’d add
>>It is an inevitable bump on the road to a clean-energy economy.

I can’t stand the way leftist writers casually throw in words like “inevitable” and get away with it. This is psychologically designed to make the reader overlook and accept it. Nothing to see here. Move along. Just business as usual. No different from any other business.

Furthermore, what is “inevitable?” Solyndra itself? Or the fact that some companies fail?

Most of us who start companies do not get the sweetheart deals that Solyndra got. Most of us sink or swim on our own. Most of us do not live a life of luxury on the taxpayer dime while running a company into the ground and then leave with our bank accounts much fatter than when we started.

[presidio9]

One thing that I’d like some help understanding is the life expectancy of the Solyndra “ladders for lizards” and their cost effectiveness. Say I’m the COO of a small manufacturing firm. Let’s put it somewhere outside of Phoenix to make this a fair argument. Say I choose to install the Solyndra panels. At what point, if ever, do I recoup my investment? Or will the reward my shareholders get be the warm feeling that they have contributed to future technological advancements that may one day make solar sort of competitive (and in the mean time helped fund the salaries of the people who choose to work in a negative profit industry)?

[presidio9]

I guess everyone is going to call him Skippy. LOL

Maybe you want to rethink that nickname. Skippy's best friend and mentor was a Reaganite.