Bill Clinton demonstrates the business acumen as Barack Obama. That is to say, none.
It seems axiomatic that when a program is proven to be a failure, democrats will redouble their efforts to institute it.
Government-run health care has never worked out as planned. It is headed toward bankruptcy in England and it costs far more than was advertised in Massachusetts. Barack Obama convinced addle-brained democrats that adding 30 million people to the health care rolls in the US was going to cost less than it does now.
Spain’s green economy was a financial calamity. Thus far solar government-backed solar programs in the US have been a disaster. Both Solyndra and Evergreen Solar served as poster children for Barack Obama, both received lots of money from Obama’s stimulus and both have gone bankrupt.
Bill Clinton, always up for a challenge, seems eager to prove that he is as big a fool as is Barack Obama when it comes to business. He tells us that all the green movement needs is a little love money.
Former President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that the success of the alternative energy movement is hampered by a lack of financing. His comments came as world leaders attending his annual philanthropic conference expressed fears about rising seas.
Rising seas?
Anyway, he says what we need to do is simply throw more money at more Solyndra’s.
Pointing to Germany’s successful creation of solar energy jobs as a model for other nations to emulate, Clinton said the main issue with green energy is a lack of proper funding.
“This has to work economically,” he said. “You have to come up with the money on the front end.”
Seems to me that $500 million is a lot of “up-front” money. But hang on- let’s have a look at that Germany’s successful solar job creation:
The outlook has turned bleak for the entire solar industry. Companies that were the darlings of the stock market and the political world until recently are now experiencing a sharp downturn. Their share prices have plunged, as they downsize and write off millions in losses.
At Phoenix Solar, a systems supplier based in the Bavarian town of Sulzemoos, sales in the period from March to July were down more than 60 percent over the same period last year. The management of Berlin-based Solon is worried about the company’s ability to survive. Its future hinges on the banks extending a loan that expires at the end of the year.
In the United States, a few well-known solar companies have already run out of money. Last week Solyndra, a Silicon Valley maker of solar power arrays, filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers.
A number of German companies are also facing legal problems. The former supervisory board chairman of Conergy, Dieter Ammer, faces charges of accounting fraud and insider trading in a Hamburg court, although he disputes the allegations. The public prosecutor’s office in the Bavarian twin cities of Nuremberg-Fürth is looking into allegations of wrongdoing by Utz Claassen, a former top executive at Solar Millennium.
Faced with their own problems, it comes as little consolation to the erstwhile sun kings that their counterparts in wind energy are dealing with their own woes. Nordex, a pioneer in the industry, plunged into the red in the first half of the year, forcing it to eliminate more than 100 jobs and reduce costs by €50 million ($70 million). In 2010, German wind turbine manufacturers as a whole saw revenues and jobs decline for the first time.
It also appears that the US is not alone experiencing “unexpected” events:
The gloomy news from the solar and wind power industries comes as something of a surprise.
Chinese competition? Who could have imagined it?
And it wasn’t as though the biggies at Solyndra didn’t know what was what:
It entered the market knowing full well that Chinese companies were already in the business and selling the same kinds of panels even more competitively.
And did Solyndra spend our money wisely?
Rather than spending its capital to become competitive, Solyndra spent its government cash on a glitzy, glassy headquarters built from scratch even as empty plants stood by. Hayward is near the Silicon Valley, the place where startups often begin in garages.
“The huge NUMMI plant was sitting there empty, so it was strange that this company was building such an elaborate headquarters so close to it,” a San Jose local told IBD on a visit last week to the area. (NUMMI, recall, was the much-ballyhooed GM-Toyota green-car project derailed by union costs last year.)
The Obama administration tried to (surprise!) blame Bush right up until this was shoved down their throats:
“By the time the Obama administration took office in late January 2009, the loan programs’ staff had already established a goal of, and timeline for, issuing the company a conditional loan guarantee commitment in March 2009,” said Jonathan Silver, who heads the Energy loan program.
Republicans pushed back hard against this version of events, unearthing internal Energy Department emails that indicate the panel evaluating the loans had made the unanimous decision to shelve Solyndra’s application two weeks before Obama took office.
A very old joke tells us of the accountant who informs his boss that they are losing $10 on every product they sell. The boss thinks for a minute, his eyes light up and he exclaims “No problem! We’ll make it up on volume!”
There simply is no overstating the stupidity of democrats.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
But Obama is great at math.
He …..
divides the country,
subtracts jobs,
adds debt and
multiplies misery.
Seriously, not one alternative energy company has survived after the gov’t teat is withdrawn.
Not in Spain.
Not in the UK.
Not in Netherlands.
Not in the USA.
But “throwing more money at it” makes it look good.
So, Dems do that.
And they do other feel-good, look good unhelpful things like ”Earth Hour.”
Are Dems capable of learning from their mistakes?
The lessons of Spain and German say ”yes.”
A little late tot he party, eh?
It cost a fortune to get very few ”green” jobs.
But now we learn from U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis that many of those supposed ”green” jobs are really ”green.”
She and the Obama administration consider a man driving a “clean energy” bus to have a “green job!”
Members of the House oversight committee meeting pressed her on the absurdity of her and Obama’s definition of a ”green” job.
“Driving a bus is driving a bus, right?” Florida Republican Rep. Connie Mack asked her. “I mean, you turn the wheel, you push the gas, you use the brake?”
Then he asked her: “If I’m sitting in a chair made out of ‘green’ material, does that make my job ‘green’?”
“We’re looking at the accuracy of your numbers here today,” House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican said.
“We already have the proof that it cost a fortune to get very few jobs. Now, we look at those jobs and we find out that those jobs are so broadly defined so that you’ve got a lot less real jobs created than even the pitiful numbers that it’s showing.”
Solis was given $500 million to create ”green” jobs.
She claims to have created 8,000 of them.
Including the bus drivers.
$62,500 it costs her to say a bus driver’s job is ”green.”
A liberal point of view;
“If it isn’t our idea, it hasn’t worked, regardless of the data. And besides, we can massage the data to “prove” our point.
If it is our idea, and it doesn’t work, blame the outcome on someone else.
And if our idea doesn’t work the first time, double down and try it again, and again, and again, and again………….
And even if we know it doesn’t work, get it on the budget so that it’s paid for year after year. When it comes up to be cut, we’ll simply claim children and grandmas will die if it’s cut.”
More Liberal Capitalistic Cronyism Corruption!
LIBERALISM = FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL and for good measure…I will [add] another…FAIL!!!
LIBERALS, for some strange reason, beyond explanation, are so miserable, arrogant and too phobic to admit their [in- your- face] failures….. it’s absolutely dumbfounding, not to mention jaw dropping….
I do believe Liberalism is a Sickness…
….And I, [albeit millions of Americans] am tired of getting screwed through [Liberal fails] and by Liberal Stupidity…damit! And to be fair, Republicans are gaining traction…
2012 Cannot get here fast enough!
@FAITH7, #5:
New businesses fail more often than not. The most optimistic rate I found suggests that less than 30% of new businesses last 10 years. Less optimistic sources suggest that 50% fail within the first year, and 95% are history by the end of year 5. So it goes. I suspect their little connection between partisan leaning and the rate of success or failure.
Meanwhile, solar power as a whole is one of the fastest growing global industries, in spite of current economic conditions.
Darrel Issa, whining today about Obama and the $528 million in federal loan guarantees to Solyndra, commented that “It is reasonable to predict that we could have the collapse of the entire solar panel manufacturing business in America.” He attributes this in part to competition from China. The Chinese government, of course, has no problem whatsoever bankrolling the development of innovative technologies that promise enormous future returns. If people like Issa prevail, the manufacture of solar panels will probably one more future industry that the Chinese will totally dominate.
An interesting comment from GOP lawmaker: US solar panel industry could fail:
With the 2012 elections coming up, that fact alone is probably enough to put the solar industry in the GOP’s cross hairs and turn Solyndra into a favorite poster child.
Could you possibly be anymore braindead? I doubt it. The fact you think they are techno-innovators is mind blowing.
Look, the chinese have a virtual monopoly on rare earth materials thanks to leftists like you strangling the companies here that used to mine them. On top of that they are flooding the U.S. market with cheap and crappy solar panels.
This coming from someone who was all for us losing in Iraq and Afghanistan just so the dems could get back into power. There is something seriously wrong with you.
Problems with solar and wind power energy sources:
1. High cost per generated kwh (especially for solar PV)
2. Large footprint required to collect energy from diffuse sources
3. Low capacity factors (sun isn’t always shining, wind isn’t always blowing)
4. No good (scalable) way to store electricity to use when the renewable is not producing
You could wave your hands at most of these problems by arguing that cost is justified to save the planet, but you can’t wave your hands at the laws of physics, and problem #4 is rarely acknowledged by people painting a picture of a renewables-powered utopia. Germany is an interesting case study. They took the decision to go all-in on renewables, acknowledging in admirable honesty that this was going to cause electricity rates to be higher. They are now faced with the fact that no miracle solution to problem #4 has yet emerged from the labs, and yet powerful constituencies are adamant that nuclear power plants be shut down. We are likely to see Germany’s carbon emissions rise as they bring new coal-fired and nat-gas-fired capacity on line to take up the slack, or buy more electricity from nuclear-powered France. At least they’ll have to be honest about this, too – taking a deliberate decision to produce higher carbon emissions, and continue depleting the fossil resources, because of their nuclear fears, while continuing to hope that a solution to problem #4 is found.
I would personally be willing to pay more for my power to get more of it from renewable sources, but then, I can easily afford it and don’t use much to begin with because I conserve. I’d also be willing to see more of my power come from nukes than from coal. What bothers me is that green energy supporters on the political left won’t put the choice honestly before voters or rate payers: will you pay more for cleaner power? What bothers me even more is that the political left won’t acknowledge or even mention problem #4 when painting futuristic visions: at least be honest and say you’d rather keep burning nat gas and even coal while hoping scientists come up with a solution, because you’d rather take your chances with a bit more global warming than allow more nuclear to be used.
I wonder about the future of solar manufacturing.
Solyndra wanted $6 per panel.
China makes such panels for $1 and $2 each.
BUT in China there are so few pollution controls that the people force the shutdown of solar panel making plants when their cancer rates sky rocket downstream.
Ironically, China tried to bogart all of their own mined rare earths just so they would be the world’s only manufacturer of solar panels, computer chips, lithium batteries and so on.
I don’t see how all of this is Bush’s fault.
Or the fault of conservatives, TEA Partiers, or Republicans.
None of them are sitting in front of a House committee taking the 5th.
@Hard Right, #7:
They don’t need to be technological innovators when they’re so good at capitalizing on other people’s innovations. Would anyone be surprised to hear at some point in the future that they’ve just bought Solyndra’s equipment at bargain basement prices and shipped it all off to China? That’s what they do. It’s part of a long-term pattern.
Republican hostility obviously isn’t just about Solyndra. It’s toward the entire alternative energy industry, and toward anyone and anything that threatens the dominance of fossil fuels. Their hostility isn’t about the future security of the nation. It’s all about where their power and money are coming from. That’s another long-term pattern that someone would have to be braindead–or brainwashed–not to have noticed. The evidence has been piling up for decades.
It’s always conspiracies with you, isn’t it greg? They aren’t hostile to the “green energy industry”. It’s just that unlike you, they can deal with reality and they know it’s a waste of money to try and implement it as our primary source of power. So you really think the dems don’t have a lot of money in fossil fuels too? Like I said, there is something wrong with you.
Oh, and instead of derailing the thread, how about you comment on how the obama admin rubber stamped an obviously bad risk AND the campaign contribution angle?
@Hard Right, #11:
That’s interesting accusation, coming from a quarter that seems to believe that the entire Obama administration is a front for some sort of socialist/environmentalist/Islamo-fascist/black radical/illegal immigrant conspiracy to bring down the United States and force everyone to use compact fluorescent light bulbs.
@Greg:
Come on now… You and I both know that it’s not the Republicans who are opposed to alternative energy.
In fact, if you were the slightest bit honest you would be forced to admit that the vast majority, if not all, opposition to wind energy, solar farms, and nuclear power plants comes from….wait for it…leftists and environmental activist groups.
Of course, we both know that you’re not interested in being the slightest bit honest.
@Greg:
Pointing out their stated beliefs, actions, and the results of them is a conspiracy? You really are deranged.
Aye, you are absolutely right. Comrade greg is just throwing a tantrum and showing his bigotry.
Actually, I’ve finally become a bit annoyed after a year or so of having respectfully stated opinions being met with gratuitous personal insults.
@Greg:
Here ya go Greg. Go ahead and file a report:
@Aye: ROFLMAO!
Thanks. I’ve completed the form. I suppose it’s now ready to be stuffed up the backside of the next person to insult me.
@Greg:
Greg
You’re on to something here. They’re usually far better at copying than they are at innovating. I have seen this repeatedly in my field.
But the fact is, there’s no money in this no matter how much Obama wants to pour down the rabbit hole. It’s why Pickens abandoned wind.
It’s not viable. Driving the costs of everything else up to make it work is stupid. That only hurts us all.
That damned Obama is determined to push his agenda no matter what the cost.
@Greg:
Ooooh… I love your new Interwebz tough guy routine…it’s sooo sexy.
Whilst we’re waiting to find out who gets a folded report stuffed up their backside… talk to me about who is really opposed to alternative energy.
All the more reason Obama should NOT allow China to get the years of research and development done by GM to create the Volt for free.
But that seems to be what Obama is arranging.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/09/gm-cuts-china-electric-car-deal—-a-china-shakedown/1?loc=interstitialskip
Seems China is a bit better equipped to play Chicago-style politics than Obama is.
It is true that any type of R&D and improvements do take a bundle of cash. That said, were any particular green energy endeavor a potential profitable venture, there would be ample private money available for a good idea that can be sold for a profit. Unfortunately, as T Bone Pickens learned with his own Texas wind farm, while it may be trendy and some (like Gore) have succeeded in using Mother Earth guilt pay off personally, it’s not necessarily a viable product. Most especially in today’s economy.
And that is what lies at the heart of most people’s objections to “green energy”, Greg. Simple dollars and sense [deliberate use of cents/sense], economic realities, pissed at being forced into a lack of choice, and inefficient power that costs more. Has nothing to do with hating alternative energy. If it were efficient, cheaper, and resulted in genuine personal savings on energy, it’d be flying off the shelf by all, regardless of party affiliation, Greg. You really shouldn’t turn what is fiscal reality of a vanity purchase – affordably only by some – into a political opinion, supposedly based on emotions instead of affordability.
Few can afford to be “green”. Even Pickens has been buying up non green stocks over the past couple of years as well. I guess, after losing that bet to Stossell on oil prices, as well as the wind farm going down, he figured he just may be wrong after all.
As I pointed out in drj’s first post about Solyndra, they may have had something over the Chinese competition with their development of a cheaper manufacturing of panels, avoiding the more expensive refined silicon currently used. They got the method, however the polysilicon the competitors were using dropped radically in prices… right along with the demand with the global economy dump. So Solyndra and their new manufacturing methods were no longer competitive.
Sheeeeet happens… However it usually happens on a private investors dime, and shouldn’t be happening on the taxpayers’ dime. The federal government has no business being in the business of acting as the nation’s stock consultant…. much as they love delving into that scenario these days.
No clue how the decline in those prices worked out with the timing of the loan and attempt to become an IPO, but it sure was not a good moment for Solyndra. As Greg points out, many new businesses fail for sundry reasons. No longer being competitive in pricing is certainly one of those.
But Greg, what you should be concerned about is that the amount given to Solyndra was more than what 35 states got for infrastructure “shovel ready” jobs. Then again, just like Solyndra was a really dumb investment call by the admin for taxpayers dollars (not unlike GM…), so were those not-so-shovel-ready-jobs that I guess we’re supposed to believe are shovel ready now with the new and improved non-stimulus bill. A waste of spending either way – going to the states, or going to Solyndra.
Which brings me to the best line of the Tea Party debate by NJ’s Gov, Gary Johnson… and oh so appropriate here.
Mata,
Good comment.
Reminded me of this ad for ”Ethical Oil.”
Ethical Oil TV Ad – Saudi Arabia (The ad Saudi Arabia doesn’t want you to see)
It is one thing to try to cut out the Saudis and others by losing money on wind and solar, but quite another to squeeze them out through a viable alternative.