Yeah, Aptera is an interesting company, but it's a tough field. Can they survive? Interestingly, Tesla is getting money from the government. Which begs the question, if a loan from the government gives a company an advantage over a competitor in the same field, is it fair for the government to pick winners and losers, in the manner that a venture capitalist or other private investors would? And I'm not knocking Tesla. I love the Tesla cars, they look hot, and although they are still not realistically priced for the market, they are getting closer and when they do get there I wouldn't mind getting one. And I don't blame them if they try to get government money. As a start up business in a tough field, you try to get it wherever you can. But Aptera was in the process of making more reasonably priced electric cars than Tesla. And if the government picked one competitor to build up, and let another one fail, it does seem unfair to Aptera, who was also doing great work with electric cars.
Crap. The facts destroy another set of anti-Obama right wing talking points. Back to the drawing board, eh Steamer?
How the hell did we get to post #77 and just now find out that this loan has been ongoing since the Bush admin? Damn liberal media!
To be fair, the Bushies "launched the process." What, precisely, does that mean? Maybe they just started with the application, and under Obama it got approved.
Which appears to be the case: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-history-of-solyndra/2011/09/13/gIQA1r5qQK_story.html I stand corrected. It definitely seemed odd that the Bush administration would have anything to do with green tech...
The Bush admin pushed alternative energy from the get-go. Ethanol was another big push of theirs. It's not about green, it's about energy security. What makes me want to clear my throat about Solyndra was that the technology was inferior, and that was well known in 2007. They did a great job with putting together some long terms deals, but the PV efficiency just wasn't there and their manufacturing capabilities were crap.
"Newly released e-mails show the Obama administration’s Energy Department was poised to give Solyndra a second taxpayer loan of $469 million last year, even as the company’s financial situation grew increasingly dire." http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...firm/2011/10/05/gIQA0IvgNL_story.html?hpid=z2
Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said Wednesday that OMB staffers were wrong in describing the agency as actively pushing to provide the second loan. “In fact, the career staff at the department had only barely begun to do the due diligence that would have been required for a second loan,” LaVera said. “This application would have had to undergo many more months of analysis before being approved,” but that was rendered moot when the company reported severe financial problems. Good digging, though. I remember you were this thorough in your investigation of Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton and other companies that benefitted from the invasion of Iraq. I'm so glad you're not just being a partisan hack.
"Even in May 2010, Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s top advisers — his senior adviser on stimulus , Matt Rogers, and his chief of staff, Rod O’Connor — were telling the White House not to worry about auditors’ warnings about Solyndra’s finances. O’Connor told a top White House adviser to Vice President Biden that the warnings were exaggerated, when a venture capitalist and Obama donor had flagged the company’s finances as a reason why the president shouldn’t visit Solyndra as scheduled on May 25. O’Connor also raised the issue of more financial support for Solyndra. Rogers, who had been a senior consultant at McKinsey before joining the administration and returned to that company last fall, told the White House that such auditors’ warnings were typical for start-ups. Solyndra applied for a second loan days after receiving the first one in September 2009. The agency had put Solyndra’s request for a second loan guarantee on a fast-tracked priority list, two sources familiar with the company’s application told The Washington Post. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because the probes of the loan are ongoing." we were lucky enough to have you leading the charge against Cheney and Halliburton, and since you were so thorough and diligent in your work i felt no need to add to it your effort on this issue has been disappointing, you'll need to try better
Yep. As the biggest cheerleader of the war in Iraq, I'd say he has that blood on his hands. Pretty well established. If you want to re-hash, I'd say you need to do your research first.
Plenty to LBJ - he was picking out bomber targets, for Christ's sake! Very few to Truman. My granddad was going to be in the first waves to land on Tokyo beach, and the use of atomic bombs in Japan almost certainly prevented them from being used in MacArthur's Yalu River plan less than a decade later to kill even more people. If anything, FDR should get the responsibility for 'guilt' because he authorized its development. None to Lincoln. The Civil War was entirely a war of choice by the Southern gentleman-class, and they bear the responsibility for the four years of deaths. My point is this: people who initiate wars of choice, rather than wars of necessity (as WW2 was) should not get an easy ticket out.
The issue I was pointing out with Cheney was how his cronies became major war profiteers through no-bid contracts. How fondly I remember Marek's outrage at those events. Lincoln, Truman: Major figures, somewhat tragic in what circumstances forced them to do. I think Lincoln's administration had some issues with war profiteering, but I can't recall the specifics. Truman would be similar to (actually, worse than) Cheney if the A-bomb had been developed by a company on which he'd served as CEO before joining the Roosevelt ticket. While people still debate Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no one accuses Truman of dropping the bomb to make money for his friends. LBJ: I don't know anything about his cronies benefitting from no-bid contracts in Viet Nam, but like Lincoln and Truman, he's a similar tragic figure whose epic fail is continuing Kennedy's policy of escalation in Viet Nam, a series of decisions that plague us to this day.
Well he could have just let the south go and declared an embargo on them until they got rid of slavery, he did have a choice. Now Lincoln made the right choice in my opinion, but others may not have.
That was a very useful post that sheds tremendous light on how I view the shelling of Fort Sumter. But I digress. So back to Solyndra...in Obama's speech he admitted that the program is going to have some failures. Why is this still a story?
Sumter would never have been shelled if Lincoln had not taken preservation of the Union as his primary responsibility, you know. In the same position it is likely Buchanan would have evacuated Sumter and Pensacola... But while crony corruption was common in the Union for much of the war, Lincoln does not bear the responsibility. It was his appointees-- Stanton, Grant and Welles, and their appointees, especially Porter, who managed to put a stop to most of it most of the time. I'm guessing ASF's query about Truman was as much about Korea as it was about A bombs...
True. But Lincoln was still reacting to the choice made by Southerners to dissolve the Union. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't many of the charges of cronyism levied at Chase, the Cookes, and the selling of war bonds. However, the program was so successful any cronyism was, unless it got out of hand, overlooked.
Why would Lincoln surrender American territory? The Union had every right to collect customs duties at Sumter and Pickens.
Sure, just like the British had the right to collect taxes from us. They had a choice to fight us to keep us in the Empire or to let us go peacefully (like they did India centuries later) both sides chose to fight, just like in the civil war. I guess that it can be argued they had no choice but to fight our revolution at that time, and they had no choice but to let India go free with out a fight (they did choose the partition plan). They do say the difference from a rebel to a revolutionary is if they win or lose. But to get back on topic, how much of the new jobs plan calls for Green energy subsidies? I hope some, as a green I want to see this technology develop.
Of course. But it all comes down to 1 fact. Just like it was the Americans rebels that directly caused the American war of independence, it was the Southern rebels that caused the American Civil War.