Solyndra

[Devils Horse]

Solyndra, Mr. Obama's shining example of green energy and jobs went into bankruptcy at the end of August taking 535 million of our tax dollars with it. The government fast tracked them the half billion dollar loan despite warnings they were in dire financial trouble. Solyndra's CEO and CFO will take the 5th at Friday's congressional hearings on the advice of their lawyers.

According to White House visitor logs, between March 12, 2009, and April 14, 2011, Solyndra officials and investors made no fewer than twenty trips to the West Wing for personal visits with members of the Obama administration.

Energy Department officials have been sitting in as observers at Solyndra’s board meetings for months prior to the crash. An e-mail exchange between Energy Department staff members in August 2009 stated that a credit-rating agency predicted the green energy company would run out of cash in September 2011.

A big financial backer of the company, Oklahoma billionaire investor George Kaiser, was one of the top bundlers to President Obama’s campaign. Bundlers are people who gather contributions from individuals in an organization or community, and present that sum to a campaign. Kaiser made numerous visits to the White House before the company received the multimillion dollar loan from the government.

Mr. Obama's comments on the matter: dead silence.

Yessir, change we can believe in. I want my money back.

[DJD]

http://money.msn.com/business-news/a...15&id=14266124

Wonder if Van Jones will be brought up in this? I'm sure the Whitehouse will find a way to blame everyone but themselves. "Change you can believe in" Geez.....

[roadrunner]

Unless you live in Illinois you do not understand Chicago politics and this is Chicago politics.

However this is pale compared to the Air force General Shelton that the administration tried to change his testimony about the fact our national defense would be hurt if we let Light Square have the wireless broad band network. Now why would you do this?

LightSquared executives and the company’s political action committee have donated to both political parties, but the PAC tilted Democratic over the last two election cycles. Falcone said he is a registered Republican and has never met President Obama. In 2005, then-Sen. Obama invested close to $100,000 in Skyterra, the company that later changed its name to LightSquared.
As well, White House emails obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show that on the very day LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja donated more than $30,000 to the Democratic Party, a representative sought to arrange for Ahuja a meeting with the president’s top technology adviser, Aneesh Chopra.
“Hi Aneesh!” LightSquared representative Dave Kumar wrote to Chopra on Sept. 23, 2010. “I touched base with my client Sanjiv Ahuja and he expressed an interest in meeting with you. … He is going to be in DC next week for a fundraising dinner with the President.”
The White House has denied any improper conduct with respect to LightSquared and Shelton’s testimony.

Were is the outrage we have a baseball star up for perjury and Obama is asking a General to go lie to congress about our national defense being jeopardized what is wrong with this picture?

[TimE]

Unless you live in Illinois you do not understand Chicago politics and this is Chicago politics.

However this is pale compared to the Air force General Shelton that the administration tried to change his testimony about the fact our national defense would be hurt if we let Light Square have the wireless broad band network. Now why would you do this?

LightSquared executives and the company’s political action committee have donated to both political parties, but the PAC tilted Democratic over the last two election cycles. Falcone said he is a registered Republican and has never met President Obama. In 2005, then-Sen. Obama invested close to $100,000 in Skyterra, the company that later changed its name to LightSquared.
As well, White House emails obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show that on the very day LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja donated more than $30,000 to the Democratic Party, a representative sought to arrange for Ahuja a meeting with the president’s top technology adviser, Aneesh Chopra.
“Hi Aneesh!” LightSquared representative Dave Kumar wrote to Chopra on Sept. 23, 2010. “I touched base with my client Sanjiv Ahuja and he expressed an interest in meeting with you. … He is going to be in DC next week for a fundraising dinner with the President.”
The White House has denied any improper conduct with respect to LightSquared and Shelton’s testimony.

Were is the outrage we have a baseball star up for perjury and Obama is asking a General to go lie to congress about our national defense being jeopardized what is wrong with this picture?

Very good post!

[Chubminnow]

I recieved an email about this at the first of the month and was going to post it here...time gets away from me.

Anyway, there were bankruptcies of three American solar power companies in the last month, including Solyndra of California. This has left China’s industry with a dominant sales position — almost three-fifths of the world’s production capacity — and rapidly declining costs.

Solar panel inspection at a factory in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Chinese companies' cost advantages overwhelm any lags in technology, analysts say.
Some American, Japanese and European solar companies still have a technological edge over Chinese rivals, but seldom a cost advantage, according to industry analysts.

Loans at very low rates from state-owned banks in Beijing, cheap or free land from local and provincial governments across China, huge economies of scale and other cost advantages have transformed China from a minor player in the solar power industry just a few years ago into the main producer of an increasingly competitive source of electricity.

“The top-tier Chinese firms are kind of the benchmark now,” said Shayle Kann, a managing director of solar power studies at GTM Research, a renewable energy market analysis firm based in Boston. Pricing of solar equipment is determined by the Chinese industry, he said, “and everyone else prices at a premium or discount to them.”

Besides Solyndra, the other two American manufacturers that filed for bankruptcy in August were Evergreen Solar, of Massachusetts, and SpectraWatt, a New York company. Another company, BP Solar, halted manufacturing at its complex in Frederick, Md., last spring.

Those bankruptcies and closings represent almost one-fifth of the solar panel manufacturing capacity in the United States, according to GTM Research.
Solyndra and Evergreen in particular suffered because they pursued unusual technologies whose competitiveness depended on their using less polysilicon, the main material for solar panels. That has become less important because polysilicon prices have tumbled more than 80 percent in the last three years as output has caught up with demand.

Analysts say that two American companies remain strongly placed. One is First Solar, the largest American manufacturer, which uses a different technology but has its biggest factory in Malaysia. The other, SunPower, is much smaller but is an industry leader in the efficiency with which its panels convert sunlight into electricity, so that they sell at a premium to Chinese panels.

But with Beijing heavily supporting its industry, the Chinese companies are forging ahead.

“There is no question that renewable energy companies in the United States feel pressure from China,” said David B. Sandalow, the assistant secretary for policy and international affairs at the United States Energy Department. “Many of them say it is cheap capital, not cheap labor, that gives Chinese companies the main competitive advantage.”

China’s three biggest solar power companies — Suntech Power, Yingli Green Energy and Trina Solar — have all in the last two weeks announced second-quarter sales increases of 33 to 63 percent from a year earlier.
Yingli and Trina were also profitable in the quarter. Suntech posted a loss, mostly because it broke a longstanding agreement to buy solar wafers — critical components in the manufacturing process — from a Singapore affiliate of MEMC Electronic Materials of Missouri. Suntech aims to make more wafers itself.

Shares in large and small Chinese solar power companies have mostly rallied in the last two weeks on the New York and Hong Kong stock markets, as investors have welcomed their strong quarterly results and the prospect of dwindling competition from Western rivals. Besides the bankruptcies in the United States, solar power companies in Germany, another big producer, have been laying off workers and retrenching.

The recent strength of Chinese stocks “truly reflects the low cost base of the Chinese solar manufacturers, and it is great to see their positioning, particularly relative to their American and European counterparts,” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a Chinese clean energy investment company based in Beijing.

[roadrunner]

Chubminnow you are correct in what you point out about China and how unfair it is to compete with them. One other point is China has no EPA and they are terrible polluters. I support clean air and water and think we need regulations for our enviorment but like most government programs the regulations go way beyond what is needed and creates a huge burden to anyone trying to manufacture in America. We need to redo all our regulations.

In our trade agreements we need to add a tax to any import if the country creates an unfair advantage to our manufactures.

[Chubminnow]

Fella's, make note of one more thing mentioned in my previous post, one of the two American companies that remain strongly placed, First Solar, has its biggest factory in Malaysia.

[DJD]

Geez I feel ignorant asking this but......if a Chinese business fails in China what happens? Does a lender (gubment) get penalized? The gubment just moves on? They pour more money into the business if they think it needs it?

Isn't it a big brother (communist) gubment economy anyway? The gubment chooses what direction the country is going in and the people have little to no choice...right?? Just curious how they work a failed business?

Anyone know how they actually work over there? I know what we are told but I'm always a little skeptical....

[roadrunner]

Unless you live in Illinois you do not understand Chicago politics and this is Chicago politics.

However this is pale compared to the Air force General Shelton that the administration tried to change his testimony about the fact our national defense would be hurt if we let Light Square have the wireless broad band network. Now why would you do this?

LightSquared executives and the company’s political action committee have donated to both political parties, but the PAC tilted Democratic over the last two election cycles. Falcone said he is a registered Republican and has never met President Obama. In 2005, then-Sen. Obama invested close to $100,000 in Skyterra, the company that later changed its name to LightSquared.
As well, White House emails obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show that on the very day LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja donated more than $30,000 to the Democratic Party, a representative sought to arrange for Ahuja a meeting with the president’s top technology adviser, Aneesh Chopra.
“Hi Aneesh!” LightSquared representative Dave Kumar wrote to Chopra on Sept. 23, 2010. “I touched base with my client Sanjiv Ahuja and he expressed an interest in meeting with you. … He is going to be in DC next week for a fundraising dinner with the President.”
The White House has denied any improper conduct with respect to LightSquared and Shelton’s testimony.

Were is the outrage we have a baseball star up for perjury and Obama is asking a General to go lie to congress about our national defense being jeopardized what is wrong with this picture?

Can I reply to myself??? here is a web site you might want to look at http://www.saveourgps.org/
I just figured this out it could effect our GPS and we can't find our honey holes this is more serious than just national defense. Sorry Devils Horse for stealing your post.