Thursday, September 08, 2011

Solyndra employee: from day one, everyone knew that our solar panels were uncompetitive... including President Obama

The Santa Cruz Sentinel explains:

The collapse Wednesday of Fremont solar panel manufacturer Solyndra was a bad way to kick off the Labor Day weekend and lead up to President Barack Obama's Sept. 8 national address on creating new jobs.

When Solyndra abruptly closed, 1,100 people lost their jobs, without severance and without warning.

For the Obama administration, the failure of the company was particularly embarrassing, since taxpayers were left on the hook for a $535 million stimulus loan guarantee made to Solyndra in 2009. That was followed by a presidential visit in 2010 where Obama touted how his administration was creating new green technology jobs.

The end for Solyndra may have been sudden, but was not entirely unexpected, since House Republicans and government bean counters had been warning the company was on shaky financial ground.
And while the administration has said the loan guarantees were made on merit, critics have pointed out that the biggest private investment in Solyndra came from venture capital funds associated with an Obama fundraiser, George Kaiser.

Solyndra executives blamed the shutdown in part on competition from government-subsidized panel makers in China, saying they couldn't compete on price. But industry analysts said Solyndra's economic and manufacturing model were flawed from the outset and the warning signs had been evident since the loan guarantee was made.

A caller to yesterday's Mark Levin radio broadcast echoed the concerns that Solyndra's offering was uncompetitive from the outset. "Julie" said that she was a relatively low-level employee of the solar panel manufacturer; she asserted that everyone in the company knew their products couldn't compete.

She also stated that the White House was well aware that Solyndra would never be able to sell their products against cheaper, more efficient technologies from China. After all: everyone knew, from the lowest-level employees to top executives, third party industry analysts and financiers.

And despite claims that there were no untoward relationships between Obama and Kaiser, it turns out that Solyndra executives, according to The Daily Caller (via Sad Hill News) were such frequent visitors to the White House they wore out the damn welcome mat.

Solyndra ‘Green’ Executives: $100,000+ In Obama Donations And 20+ White House Trips - According to White House visitor logs, between March 12, 2009, and April 14, 2011, Solyndra officials and investors made no fewer than 20 trips to the West Wing. In the week before the administration awarded Solyndra with the first-ever alternative energy loan guarantee on March 20, four separate visits were logged.

George Kaiser, who has in the past been labeled a major Solyndra investor as well as a Obama donor, made three visits to the White House on March 12, 2009, and one on March 13... Kaiser, in fact, is responsible for 16 of the 20 meetings that showed up on the White House logs.

Once again, I ask of this administration: what did Barack Obama know? And when did he know it?

As an aside, when the full history of the Obama administration is written, I believe its documented, wanton criminality will dwarf all other presidential scandals combined (and multiplied by ten).


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