*Shrug* You take your chances - sometimes you win, somtimes you lose. In any case, it's a helluva lot more positive than sitting back and waiting for three decades of tax cuts to trickle down and magically create jobs...somehow.
I hear what you're saying, Claymore, but momma always said life is a box of chocolates. But that's not important right now. My momma always said two wrongs don't make a right. I'd be curious to know more about the mechanics of how this deal got pushed through. OK, that seems pretty...not good. Um, I'm gonna need a link before I buy that their actual business plan was to lose money.
Fail with a whiff of a scandal. Poorly run company with connections to White House gets favorable contracts, etc. Could be any administration but looks bad when it fails.
I understand that some investments don't work out. But this is our government, a supposed steward of our tax dollars. I'm not a voluntary investor who has done dilligence and been burned, this is money that should be purposed elsewhere for other uses. http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1443115/000119312510058567/ds1a.htm#toc15203_8 Have a look. Does this look like a company with a track record you'd want to get behind? eit: to be fair, the gov't should get a large portion of the money lent back in the bankruptcy process. but, just like GM and Chrysler, what will that cost other lenders who are not the government?
How many solar startups are there? To my knowledge, there's not many surviving US solars with a positive balance sheet. Was it a risky investment with a possible political upside? Sure. But in the universe of Stupid Shit Done With Our Money, pumping it into a bad investment to try and prime the economy doesn't even register.
I like the idea of alternative energies and think it's a good use of public money. I wish it would have been spent with a better company.
There aren't many solar companies left because China has a 10 year head start on us. We may as well cede the field to them at this point.
According to this article, there are only a couple of them available. Unless we want to pony up for "Suntech Power, Yingli Green Energy and Trina Solar," which are highly profitable and which have low labor costs (thereby making them an investor's dream) -- but I think it would be a real scandal if we gave American money directly to Chinese companies.
Why are you being such a literalist? Of course he doesn't mean that his free speech is repressed on BS or that nobody can call out Obama's statement- but its pretty clear he meant that Big Soccer is overwhelmingly liberal (as it is) and that the majoirty wont bring up or call out the left on its scandals. Just be fair.
The majority of network news, newspapers, magazines, hollywood, and music culture are to the left. So yes, fox and talk radio is to the right, there is the Washington Times, but pointing out that the majority of media / popular culture is to the left is fair game. Also, do you have any links showing Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity claiming they are representing an underprivileged repressed majority? I seriously challenge the fact that they made these claims.
I definitely do not think such absolutes such as Steamer posted are irrelevant. One in every ten million Americans is probably hearing enough voices in their head to try and kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia, and I don't think FOX news (and to be fair, most of CNN or MSNBC except Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper) ameliorate those conditions by creating a culture of victimhood. Self-perceived victims have been known to do horrifying things. So no, I do not think it's semantic to ask people why they choose to state such absolutes when there is a nice and long history suggesting that proclaiming victimhood to this extent is typically a bad thing. Not Bill or Sean, but how about Rush claiming that conservatives - which are the largest ideological group in the country - are oppressed. But let's get to your idea that news is biased. Do you consider these organizations "liberal?" CNN ABC CBS Washington Post Chicago Tribune LA Times USA Today The BBC Politico.com Yahoo News Google News Because I consider none of them to be so. I have listed three of the largest television companies, four of the most influential newspapers, the most influential international television channel, and three very pertinent news-compiling internet websites (the latter two are, of course, the most-viewed sites on the Internet). None, in my opinion, suggest any systematic bias toward any group of individuals. In fact, the Tribune and LA Times are considered more conservative than not, but their editorial pages are very balanced. Given the power of these institutions in American information dispersal, how on EARTH can you say that there is a majority bias towards liberalism in American journalism? Given that you will never accept my definition of "absolute failure," and I will never understand why you don't see that $300 million for 150 jobs does not equal $2 million/job (unless solar companies exclusively spend on labor and never put out a product, I cannot imagine that the $2 million/job figure is accurate), there is no reason for us to argue over it. Humans are condemned to our points of view and rarely show inclination to try and reach beyond our mental trappings to understand more.
Sounds like what the company needed to do was donate more money to the Democrats so that they could land some government contracts to sell the panels to the government for $10.
I can understand somebody making the argument that looking to develop alternative energy may be a good use of public money -if the government has money to spend - as part of a well thought out long term effort to develop an alternative energy industry that is competitive internationally and also has a positive impact on the environment. But if the purpose is to use money as a neo-keynesian tool to help stimulate the economy in the short term at a time when jobs are desperately needed, even if we were to concede that the government helping out businesses with stimulus money is a good idea, spending it on companies involved in risky new technologies is definitely not the smartest use of the money. My guess is that it must have been tempting from a political standpoint for the Obama administration to kill two birds with one stone (meaning satisfy both the neo-keynesians and the environmentalists in one move) and so they chose to make it into a political event, and neglected to use common sense. As some pointed out, this is not a huge thing in the overall scheme of things, but we are in difficult times so every little thing counts, and I hope a lesson was learned.
Seriously man, I have no idea what you are talking about. He said "nobody on Big Soccer calls out Obama". Anybody who is not autistic knows that means he is saying Big Soccer is liberal- to take it literally and point one instance of somebody calling out Obama is ridiculous. Humans don't talk in literal absolutes, and you take his comment as an absolute because you are trying to prove your pre-conceived notion that Steamer is self-victimizing himself. Sometimes take a step back, take a deep breath, and try not to act like a partisan zealot. So we are not going to agree, but the orgs I bolded above I think are clearly liberal. I don't interact with Google or Yahoo news much, so cannot make an opinion on those- also I don't read the Chicaco Tribune so again I dont know. I will give you USA Today, it is fairly moderate. Politico and CNN lean left, but they are close, which is why I only bolded half of them. That being said, anybody who watched CNN's coverage leading up to the 2008 election cannot possibly, under any circumstance, say that they were not unfair for Obama and against McCain. Poll after poll show that members within the meida back Democrats and are liberal. And while I get that does not mean the media is biased- it is a leap of faith to assume that media orgs are going to go against their innate beliefs. Also, the majority of Americans believe the media leans left. Even many Democrats in the media admit it: http://www.mrc.org/biasbasics/biasbasics2admissions.asp I know liberals like to debunk it, but there is the famous UCLA media bias study. There are also other studies that show that when controlled for everything else, when Democrats are in power news stories on the economy tend to be more positive than when Republicans are in power. I read the LA Times often- and to say the news pages are "Conservative" and the editorial board is "balanced" leads me to believe 1 of 2 things: 1) you are insane 2) you do not read the LA Times Not only does the editorial page endorse almost every Democratic candidate in every election, the editorials they run are to the left by a large margin. Yes, there is Goldberg, but he is the exception. We are not going to agree on media bias, so there is no real point to discuss it. This is my opinion, yours is obviously different. To say nothing of your condescending presumptuous tone you take anytime somebody disagrees with you- I should point out that the 300 million / 150 job example is not the only one. How about "Evergreen Solar Inc is a "Massachusetts company that the White House once said 'is hoping to hire 90 to 100 people' thanks to stimulus money has $485.6 million in debt. Evergreen closed a factory in March, reports the Boston Herald, and cut 800 jobs. A Michigan plant is to be shut down, as well, causing the loss of even more jobs." or "Green Vehicles of Salinas, Calif., which has burned through more than $500,000 in money 'invested' by the city, folded last month without having produced anything of significance. The company promised it would employ about 70 and pay back Salinas taxpayers with $700,000 a year in city taxes." I am sure there is plenty of "absolute failure" within the 300mil/150j example. Again, study after study show that government backed green jobs actually cost the economy jobs in the long run.
It never ends up being profitable for the government to spend unless it can be sure that there will be a finished product. In this case, the gov't would not only have to be an investor, but a major customer of the companies product.
Having lived in Silicon Valley since 1992 and seeing many VC funded ventures fail and succeed, what bothers me about the loan to Solyndra isn't that it ultimately failed. It was a time when VC and banks weren't giving capital, so the federal govt giving out loans might have been the right thing to do at that moment. What is bothersome, however, is the amount of the loan - $500 million. You rarely see that kind of money invested by one VC in one company. And it is for a very good reason. VCs want to spread out their risk. That should have been done in this case too. It should have been $50 million to 10 companies, or better $10 million to 50 companies. And it isn't like Solynda was the only game in town. I know of several companies (electric car company Aptera for one) that needed a loan for smaller amounts and were denied. Success was never guaranteed for Aptera, but while Obama was touring the factory at Solyndra talking about creating jobs, Aptera was laying off people and stopped development on a very innovative all electric car. A car that I would have liked to see make it to production.
Really? CNN (and we have to add HLN as well as they are often referenced on their website) - moderate. Certainly not liberal. Anybody with that ass clown Nancy Grace is not liberal. ABC and CBS are also moderate. They have to try and pull in viewers from both sides. WaPo - They might be a bit left leaning, but they also are fair. If a Dem screws up, they call them on it. LA Times - Their chief demographic is Californians. They tend to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Talking about money is boring, so, sure, it might be a bit left, but hardly liberal. And for a while, they were considered conservative. BBC - Europe had a tendency to be more liberal than the US. Not a fair addition to the list. And I would add Yahoo News to the conservative wing. They go for the headline grabbers and have articles that lack critical analysis. Not that this makes them worse than CNN, but they seem to pick more conservative topics. That is because society, in general, moves forward. The Media have to move with society. Dems are the ones that typically try and push the movement forward with Reps trying to keep the breaks on. It is in their self interest to be more in favor of things that change - it gets people to pick up their papers/go to their web sites. There have also been more detailed analysis of that idea as well. This has long been the arguement about the LA Times. Conservatives thought it was too liberal, and liberals thought it was too conservative. Seems they have a middle ground.
Note of order: That UCLA study has been widely discredited by many sources and shouldn't be thrown out there as "proof" of media bias.
can we consider this: the firms may have been better able to compete if they located themselves in states that don't have such high costs of living, with cheaper workforces, and less robust regulatory environments? I mean, the last places I'm building manufacturing facilities in this country are California, Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland. Yet, all the bankrupt solar manufacturers in the article you linked to did just that. Why not go to Tennessee or Mississippi or South Carolina? Surely, with cheaper land, cheaper labor, and a surfeit of tax breaks any of those states would have dished out would have left these companies better able to fight the fight than their chosen business plans.
I mentioned this in response to another Ties post (to which, of course, he didn't respond) that mentioned the Grosclose study, but even the Libertarians over at The Volokh Conspiracy were tearing that study to shreds based on its methodology, not its conclusion. Professor Grosclose was discussing his study as a guest blogger on the site and came off poorly in his attempts to respond to a couple of the other Volokh bloggers (notably Orin Kerr) as well as the commenters. In fact, the primary criticism was that while many suspected that there probably was a liberal bias in the media, Grosclose had done a disservice to that theory with his suspect methodology. The back and forth was like watching a train wreck.
I also noticed how Wingtips didn't mentioned "massive government subsidies to certain industries like solar energy" which also charactizes China right now.
To be honest, as soon as Ties highlighted ABC and CBS, I realized I had nothing more to say to him on this matter, no matter how hard I tried. ABC and CBS have, to their credit and collapsing share of news influence, stayed out of the way. CNN of course just teamed up with the Tea Party for a debate. To accuse these three institutions of liberal bias when indeed their goal is to report the news is to show a complete disregard for the facts on the ground, the way society works, and is an indictment of our education system. It is truly embarrassing.