Free Republic

The total San Diego County workforce for various Kyocera subsidiaries after the cuts will be 625... ...One reason cited for the downturn in orders for U.S.-made panels is the conclusion of stimulus funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act...

It’s Earth Day! The annual global observance when billions of people take time from their busy days to nurture, pamper, and otherwise kiss up to the universally revered world-deity Gaia. Well, not really, but it is a day when preachy environmentalists attempt to guilt-trip people for squatting on the planet they are forced to live on. More than usual that is.

A Findlay-based solar power firm that was awarded nearly $20 million in state and federal tax breaks and grants ceased production last week and cannot afford to pay $197,000 that terminated employees say is owed in severance packages. Flabeg Solar U.S. Corp. will "most probably" file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy but is open to takeover offers, said its Pittsburgh attorney, Robert Lampl. Flabeg's parent company in Germany has cut off funding for the subsidiary, which operated in a 4-year-old, 228,000-square-foot facility covering more than three acres near the Pittsburgh International Airport. ... Over the past several years, the solar industry...

The government-backed electric car company Fisker Automotive laid off about 160 workers Friday, or roughly 75 percent of the automaker's staff, as it has struggled to find financial backing that would allow it to continue building its high concept clean cars. The layoff announcement came as the innovative start up faces a looming repayment on a loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, and as reports have swirled that it could be preparing to file for bankruptcy. As with the failed solar firm Solyndra, the green car company was once an early pick by the Obama Administration to be part...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog We are living in Obama’s Solyndra economy – cronyism at its worst In 2009 the Obama administration gave $535 million to Solyndra, claiming that it would create 4,000 new jobs. However, instead of creating those 4,000 new jobs, the company went bankrupt. It was later revealed that the company’s shareholders and executives had made substantial donations to Obama’s campaign, that the company had spent a large sum of money on lobbying, and that Solyndra executives had had many meetings with White House officials.It was also revealed that the Obama administration had already been aware of Solyndra’s...

Bad Data: As yet another Solyndra looms, a new government report shows that by the government's own broad definition of a green job, more can be found in a coal mine than near a solar panel. The second annual Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report on "Employment in Green Goods and Services," released Tuesday, will be the last, allegedly a casualty of the same sequestration that claimed the White House tours and may doom the Easter egg hunt on the White House lawn. That is probably a good thing, for if it were published as a book, it would deserve...

Seagate Technology on Friday unveiled a $180 million cutting-edge research and development complex at the former Solyndra solar factory in Fremont, a site the company will use to invent next-generation disk drives. Up to 600 people could work at the facility, depending on product demand, Seagate executives said. "It's a big deal to be keeping high-tech research and development jobs in Silicon Valley," said Mark Re, a Seagate senior vice president and R&D executive. "This is going to be a state-of-the-art facility." Late Thursday, Seagate installed a huge sign with its name and logo on the side of the 411,000-square-foot...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who came to the White House leading a push for green energy, but got snarled by the Solyndra bankruptcy, announced his plan to resign on Friday. Chu wrote a long explanation of his decision to Energy Department employees. In the letter Chu seemed to begin by defending his tenure against critics who decried the loans made to the solar company Solyndra under his watch. “…I believe we should be judged not by the money we direct to a particular State or district, company, university or national lab, but by the character of our decisions.” Chu laid...

Commentators both left and right agree that Barack Obama's second inaugural speech Monday was highly partisan, with shout outs to his constituencies on the left and defiance of his critics on the right. Obama quoted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and made brief reference to Abraham Lincoln's sublime Second Inaugural ("blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword"). But there was not much in the way of "with malice toward none, with charity for all." There were more references than in many inaugural speeches to specific programs and policies. One interesting question is what the practical effect...

The China problem is not just that China is raking in trillions of dollars because of Obama's spending and borrowing binges, and it's not just that government policies encourage well-paying U.S. manufacturing jobs to move overseas. An even bigger problem is that the Obama administration is about to give Communist China some of our most precious and up-to-date military technology. This particular chicanery started when the Obama administration foolishly tried to use taxpayers' money to force green energy to replace fossil fuels. But green energy can't compete in the free market because it's so much more expensive to produce. Obama...

A trend has taken shape in Washington, and it has put our country on a devastating path towards potential fiscal ruin. The trend is characterized by an unsustainable penchant for spending money we don’t have. It became crystal clear in last year’s debt ceiling negotiations and was further highlighted by the recent debate surrounding the fiscal cliff; our country is broke, yet our government continues to spend more, risk more and accumulate more debt. Entitlements are often blamed for the vast majority of our spending issues, but our tendency to overspend is not restricted to just these. Parallels exist...

“Employees at bicycle shops have green jobs,” economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth points out in a Capital Research Center study. “So do workers at antique dealers, at the Salvation Army used clothing recycling centers, and at used record stores, because used items count as recycled goods.” Furchtgott-Roth testified at a congressional hearing in June that examined the definition of “green jobs.” “As a witness at the hearing, I explained that, because the white paper cup placed before me on the table had a ‘Power to Save Energy’ logo, employees who produced it had green jobs,” she recalls. “The product met the BLS...

A bankruptcy judge Monday confirmed Solyndra LLC’s Chapter 11 plan, brushing aside protests from the Department of Energy, which stands to lose most of the $527 million in taxpayer dollars it risked on the company.... A123 Systems Inc., the electric car battery maker that filed for Chapter 11 last week after receiving nearly $250 million in government grants, wants to pay more than $4 million in bonuses to a handful of top executives ...

One of the most important issues in this year's election is energy. Our ongoing addiction to Mideast oil leaves us dependent on countries that are often unstable and hostile. Developing our own domestic energy resources and investing in renewable energy lessens this dependence. It also has the potential to create jobs and improve our trade deficit. The two presidential candidates have laid out energy plans that sound similar: both President Obama and Governor Romney want to continue to develop domestic energy resources, including renewable energy, with the aim of making the U.S. less dependent on foreign oil. But according to...

The cost to taxpayers for the failure of solar panel company Solyndra may be much higher than the $535 million dollar federal loan guarantee the company received. After the company went bankrupt in last August, 2011, the Energy Department, which had given the original loan, okayed an unprecedented deal to attract more private investment to Solyndra. One result of this deal is that it has allowed more than $350 million in tax write-offs to pass to those private creditors, one of which is owned by a major donor to President Obama. The House Oversight Committee now warns the total loss...

The Wall Street Journal reports that George Kaiser, "a Tulsa oil billionaire who bundled campaign checks for Mr. Obama in 2008," is poised to accomplish one of the great scams of all time. Here is how it works. The "primary investment arm of the George Kaiser Family Foundation" is Argonaut Ventures I LCCC. Argonaut Ventures happens to be the largest shareholder in Solyndra LCC, the California-based solar panel maker that received a $535 million U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee in September 2009 and went bankrupt two years later, laying off nearly 1,000 workers. Now the very same Argonaut Ventures, thanks...

I can only scratch the surface here, but the following are a few of the questions I would like to see President Obama answer in a debate. Mr. President, your confidante Valerie Jarrett once said: "There's nobody more self-critical than President Obama. Part of the burden of being so bright is that he sees his error immediately." If that is accurate, sir, why do you feel it took you so long to realize you were shellacked in the first debate, and why did you still bitterly cling to that error days afterward, saying that if people would read the transcript,...

It is no secret that President Obama’s and green-energy supporters’ (from both parties) foray into venture capitalism has not gone well. But the extent of its failure has been largely ignored by the press. Sure, single instances garner attention as they happen, but they ignore past failures in order to make it seem like a rare case. The truth is that the problem is widespread. The government’s picking winners and losers in the energy market has cost taxpayers billions of dollars, and the rate of failure, cronyism, and corruption at the companies receiving the subsidies is substantial. The fact that...

....So far, 36 companies that have received federal support from taxpayers have either gone bankrupt or are laying off workers and are heading for bankruptcy. This list includes only those companies that received federal money from the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy. The amount of money indicated does not reflect how much was actually received or spent but how much was offered. The amount also does not include other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies, which push the amount of money these companies have received from taxpayers even higher. The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:...

It will come as no surprise to some but the bankruptcy court hearing for Solyndra just threw up all over any hopes that our taxpayer-funded loans to this solar sinkhole will be recovered: *SOLYNDRA HAS ABOUT $71 MILLION IN NET DISTRIBUTABLE ASSETS *SOLYNDRA LENDERS AHEAD OF GOVERNMENT OWED ABOUT $77 MILLION So it looks like a $0 recovery for us - US Government: Picking Losers One Sector At A Time.