Solyndra spent about two million on lobbying for a half a billion in loan guarantees. And the money went to Democrats. Your money. Your involuntary campaign donation.
This is a perfect example of why the government shouldn’t be in the business of helping business. It’s an inherently corrupting process.
[Update a few minutes later]
Solyndra, the logical end point of Obamanomics:
No wonder many Democratic strategists predicted their party’s 2008 landslide win would usher in a generation of political dominance. Obamanomics, essentially, would divert taxpayer dollars to the Green Lobby – and then into the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party. This is what crony capitalism is really all about: politicians enriching favored businesses, who then return the favor. Or maybe it’s the other way around, Who cares, really. It’s an endless, profitable loop for both.
Note how Goldman Sachs is always involved, as well. I would hope that Obamanomics has been thoroughly discredited by now. But based on the continuing defense of some commenters here, probably not.
[Update a couple minutes later]
A doomed quest:
President Obama’s campaign tour for another half-trillion-dollar stimulus will not work for a number of reasons, and one of them is terrible timing. As he tries once again to assure the public that government agencies can take borrowed money and translate it into shovel-ready jobs, four facts drown out the effort. The Solyndra bankruptcy disaster is a sort of open-sore advertisement not to do these things. The special elections in New York and Nevada suggest that the voters are not receptive to the idea that more federal debt means more private sector jobs. The European meltdown daily shows the world the terrible wages of massive public debt. And the current Republican primary campaigning is reminding the public that nearly $5 trillion in borrowed money between 2009 and 2011 was an abject failure. Consequently, the vocabulary of that misguided effort — euphemisms like “stimulus,” “shovel-ready,” “investments,” and “infrastructure” — now provokes laughter rather than applause.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s going to take many painful years to undo the damage that all of these big spenders, Republicans and Democrats alike, have done to the economy.
[Update early afternoon]
The myth of nonpartisan civil service:
…this career civil servant is concerned that a default coinciding “with the 2012 campaign season” could hurt the president’s reelection effort. That is his biggest worry, not what is in the best financial interests of the American people. As Lachlan Markay writes over at the Heritage Foundation, “The Administration was essentially letting the 2012 campaign dictate decisions on the federal government’s financial involvement with Solyndra. They were not responding to normal profit-and-loss signals.”
Which is why the government shouldn’t be making these decisions.